


you won, live with it

by low_fi



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
Genre: Angst, Batdad, Catmom - Freeform, Character Study, Dick Grayson is Nightwing, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Jim Gordon is the real hero in this story, Mental Illness, POV alternating but mainly Selina, deals with Jason's death (or doesn't), my take on Selina in the movieverse, takes place before BVS and is canon divergent
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2020-10-18 14:40:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 26,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20640827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/low_fi/pseuds/low_fi
Summary: When Selina is afraid, she runs home. HIATUS





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I should definitely warn you that this is a personalised take on both Bruce and Selina. Basically, Catwoman in this is to her what Brucie Wayne is to Bruce. I wanted to mess around with her character and didn't originally plan to post this, but I'm liking it so far and I'm curious if you will too.  
At first I used some warnings, but on second thought there are a lot of troubling themes in this fic and I'm not sure I know how to warn for them adequately. I will say no batfamily members die except for Jason, whose death is discussed. Read at your own peril and enjoy.  
i don't consent to reposting or translating this work (this includes apps) please read it here, on ao3. #

you won, live with it

It's the twelfth night in a row that the signal's been in the sky since Selina got back. Whether the Bat is working or not has nothing to do with it; it's there as a reminder, if a rather melodramatic one. It's a familiar sight, though, and for that alone she enjoys it. 

Gotham is home, but she doesn't call it that out loud anymore. Gotham's her home in the sense that it's where she goes when everything else burns down; it's not where she wants to be, but where she ends up regardless. A better-the-devil-you-know kind of thing.

The apartment waited years, dead and empty and patient. Like it knew she'd lose the Star City place eventually. Gotham is a forgiving lover.

Time---changes things. She sets out to treat her stay here as a necessary interlude, a moment to get her bearings; to turn in the air before she lands on all fours again. She'll go through the motions if she has to, and then she'll get out of here. There is nothing different about Gotham, nothing to justify her hesitation. She's a thief. She doesn't know how to be anything else, and she doesn't feel like trying.

*

It's blind luck, when it happens.

Gotham is generally no-one's favourite place to be, and Gotham during a heatwave is worse. Jim Gordon tucks himself away in his office and tries to survive the afternoons; every appearance of his is so public, so attention-heavy that it almost seems like practicality, not cowardice, to remain safely hidden in his fortress. Sweat sticks his shirt to his back, soaks his collar. He rolls up his sleeves and tries to focus over the roar of the AC. It aged about as well as he did.

There would've been no reason to leave, today. 

But then comes the storm. 

It breaks the sky and sends rain pounding almost horizontally against the windows; the sound of it, like hail, like bullets, harsh and irregular against the metal windowsills. Lightning stabs the city over and over, rolls of thunder following in deep, guttural growls. Calls start coming in - low visibility already causing crashes, flooding, threat of fried circuitry. All of it, bad news.

The rain doesn't stop. It doesn't even lessen. He drives home late at night with his windscreen wipers on full speed, two frantically working blurs of black throwing the water off with almost-visible effort, dragging the orange glow of the streetlights with them. Traffic slows down to a snail's pace and he's forced to take a shortcut through one of the less savoury alleyways, empty black windows staring down at him on either side. He feels his skin crawling and wishes he was home already.

So it's blind luck that he doesn't miss it when it happens; maybe it's the fact he's trained himself to notice these things, maybe it's that he's always subconsciously searching for that familiar shift of black against black, movement more than shape. 

Whatever the reason or circumstance, he sees something fall from a rooftop. 

It falls in a strange, strangled arch, then rams into the brick of the building ahead with a sound like wet leather hitting stone. Jim hits the breaks and stares---part of him already knows what he's looking at, suspended there like a fish on a hook, but the water is pulling at reality, leaving room for doubt.

Then the line releases, reeling itself in, and the bundle of black smacks wetly against the pavement. There's no hesitation this time: Jim throws the car door open and runs up. He should call it in before he does anything---he should probably go back and get his weapon from the car---but he's already here, the rain on his glasses, and a puddle of wet black fabric at his feet.

Ironic, he thinks distantly, that he'd spend years chasing after something only to have it fall directly in front of his car the second he stopped trying to catch it.

The cape clings to his form like a thin membrane. Gordon crouches down; his legs give out almost immediately and he falls to his knees.

His glasses are covered in tiny droplets. He takes them off, wipes at his face. 

Gently, as gently as he can, he reaches for the man's shoulder and turns him onto his back. The wet cape twists around him, catching on his waist; Gordon drops the glasses and takes care to turn his entire body at the same time, lowering it slowly, inch by inch. If it's the spine, then he shouldn't be moving him at all, but he has to be sure---

Like someone electrocuted him, the Bat twitches and jerks up, his entire body tensing under Gordon's hands. He forces himself up on his elbows with a groan, knees bending, and for a moment Jim thinks he might be alright---but then his head rolls back, and he's down just as fast as he awoke. Gordon only just manages to cradle the back of his skull with his hand before it hits the pavement.

"Oh, Jesus," Jim mutters to himself.

The cowl is as impassive as ever, but the line of the man's mouth has gone slack, soft almost, as opposed to the usual frown. Gordon clenches his jaw. The Bat was not meant, not designed to be seen like this.

If he were anyone else, Gordon would be calling an ambulance. He saw the height from which he fell; he'd be insane not to try and get him help, but---

If he does, then the Bat is done.

Gordon thinks quickly. He gets his hands underneath the man's arms, drags him towards the entrance to one of the abandoned buildings on either side of the narrow alley; and God, he's a big man as it is, but with all that gear he weighs about as much as a small car, or at least that's what it feels like half-pulling, half-carrying him up to the upper level. The windows are dirty here, but mostly intact, and there's a space on the garbage-strewn floor that's just enough to put a Bat in. Panting, Gordon pushes some cans and what he thinks might be syringes away from the two of them, and well, at least they're out of the rain.

He leaves him for a moment to go to the car. He takes his gun and a first aid kit, and once again fails to call this in.

He goes back up, foolishly hoping to find nothing but an empty rectangle of flooring where he'd left the Bat. He's so used to the disappearing act, that almost-supernatural swiftness about him, it's all kinds of wrong when he walks up and the Batman is still there. Unconscious.

Gordon gets down on one knee to inspect the cowl. A chunk of the outer layer is missing over his left temple, the ear above it chipped; some sort of wiring has been exposed and visibly damaged. He can't see any other injuries, but then again it's dark, and the man is wearing black body armour. He never intended on being scrutinised.

Gordon sighs. It's times like this that he misses Robin.

He moves on to take a look at the belt. If he can activate some sort of distress beacon, maybe one of his own can come pick him up. They have to have a place where they get patched up; the Bat's seen worse than this, much worse, and yet he's never been rushed to a hospital on a stretcher. Well. At least not as the Gotham Bat.

No luck, though. Gordon sits back on his heels with a creak of wet fabric and a sigh; if no-one shows up within an hour, he'll call an ambulance. 

*

No-one shows up.

The ambulance, he realises now, was a bluff against himself. He was never going to save the Batman only to cuff him to the hospital bed and read him his rights; he couldn't. It's been years. Years. 

It would be---like shattering a world.

And he knows, he knows that he's a hypocrite. That there cannot be exceptions. That no-one should be allowed to do what the Batman does.

But Gordon has lived long enough to also know that life is rarely about what should be; life is weaved from exceptions and contradictions; life doesn't make any goddamn sense and it never will.

And that leaves the only other possibility. 

Take off the cowl.

He has to take a look at the injury. The man could be bleeding into his brain. Any number of things could he happening under that ruined wiring, and---

He drags a hand over his own face out of sheer helplessness. Then he almost bites his tongue off when something slips into the room through the window. 

*

Selina's in the shower when she gets the call.

She languidly ignores it, tipping her head back to feel the scalding hot water in her short-cropped hair. There is no-one in the world she'd care to talk to right now, especially not someone rude enough to call instead of texting.

But something about that - the fact it's a call, not a text - sticks with her. She tries to focus on the water again, the almost-choking thickness of the hot air around her, the red behind her eyelids---but then she just sighs in annoyance and pushes the creaky plastic shower door aside, just enough to poke her head and one arm out. The rest of the bathroom is freezing cold compared to the microclimate she'd created, and goosebumps form on her skin as she reaches for the phone.

She gets water on the screen. She wipes it off with her thumb and reads the name. Her heart throws itself against her ribs in one powerful thump before setting off at a new, quickened pace. She frowns a little at her own reaction---it's unjustified---but really, what in the world could Alfred Pennyworth possibly want from her?

She climbs out of the shower, stepping onto the towel on the floor, and calls back.

"Miss Kyle?" a familiar, wryly English voice greets her.

"Hello, Alfred," she says, smiling an involuntary smile. He'd never approved of her, but always been kind about it, and she still remembers how much it surprised her. "How are you?"

"Miss Kyle, I'll cut to the chase," his voice grows a touch more severe, and Selina holds the phone to her ear instead of keeping it playfully between finger and thumb. "I've lost contact with Master Wayne." The strain is starting to show between his words. "I do not know the state he's in, but I suspect sending a car may not be enough. Can you help him?" He pauses. "Miss Kyle. I realise you did not part on good terms, but as it stands you are the only party a----"

"What happened?" she asks, inane.

"A fall, I suspect. Shall I send you his last known location?" He clears his throat. "Miss Kyle, an answer, please."

"I'll find him," she says, almost cutting Alfred off, and rushes out of the bathroom. She stifles a full body shiver as she drops the phone and dries herself with a T-shirt she picks out from the pile by the bed; she gets the costume out of the case and squeezes into it, leather and damp skin a very unfortunate combination. A few of her babies walk closer to inspect all the commotion, and let out a choir of protesting meows when she falls to the bed to pull on her boots. 

Her wet hair feels awful pressed down, the heat from her skin fogs up her goggles. She throws the window open as she's still pulling on one mitten, and she has to admit it feels good to have claws again, to be her again---

She gently pushes back a fat tabby that's climbed up onto the windowsill beside her. It flops gracefully back onto the floor and looks up, big green eyes accusatory.

"Mommy needs to go save a friend," she says with a few exaggerated nods. "Yes, she does."

The tabby contemplates this for a moment, then walks away, which is universal cat-speak for detached approval. Taking the blessing, she drops out of the window into the pouring rain, and a second later she's swinging through Gotham like she never left.

*

It takes about thirty minutes to reach the location Alfred sent her, which is more than she'd have liked but as much as she can manage when she's so out of practice with the whip. It's been months; and in her heart, it feels like days, but her muscles are inclined to disagree. She knows she'll pay for this tomorrow morning, but any excuse to get back into the searing-hot shower is a good one, and truth be told---

She's antsy. She wants to find him.

It's simple. It doesn't require her to talk to him; it doesn't require anything at all. Think of it as paying off a debt for the benefit of the doubt which she'd so abused, with him.

He deserves to be saved by someone better. But if she's all there is, then she won't leave him there to die.

Turns out, he didn't get too far from where he dropped - she spots him with a handheld scanner, a mass of equipment that flares up like a Christmas tree against the empty stillness of the abandoned building. He's on the floor, and there's someone else there, sitting down beside him. 

She steps inside over the windowframe, careful not to make a sound but knowing she might have to pick this fight anyway. She's coiled, shoulders squared and thighs tense from the half-crouch as she approaches----but then, the sitting man gets up, and she recognises a familiar face.

A disturbingly familiar face. 

For a moment, Selina is at a loss. Then her gaze drops to Bruce, his still form on the floor; and he looks so profoundly wrong there, on his back like that, cowl damaged but still hiding his face, so it's difficult to assess the extent---

She wants to---move him, hide him, anything. She can see his throat.

"Oh, God," she hears herself say, "Is he...?"

"He's breathing," the commissioner says in a tired, level voice. "He hit his head pretty hard."

Painfully aware of the commissioner's eyes still on her, she crosses the room, every step carefully quiet until she's standing beside the motionless suit of armour on the ground. All she can hear is the whisper or rain behind her and her own hammering heart; this close, she can see his chest rising and falling, and she swallows the relief. Of course he's fine. He's Bruce

"Hey, handsome," she says, though he obviously can't hear her. Slowly, she takes a knee, and brushes her knuckles over his jaw. It's been a while; there's some grey.

The commissioner inhales sharply, and she turns to look at him, startled. He snaps his gaze between her and Bruce. "Why are you here?"

"I got a call," she replies, too blithe. 

He crosses his arms on his chest. "You?"

"Commissioner," she murmurs, looking down at Bruce again, losing herself a little in it. "There's no need to keep up appearances."

He still looks uncomfortable, probably wrestling with the temptation to arrest her, but in the end he doesn't. 

"You showed up," he admits. "That's good enough for tonight." 

"Thank you," she looks up at him and smiles, quick and intentionally wicked. "And thank you for watching over him. Can you tell me what happened?"

*

They talk quickly. Gordon watches as the familiar shadow of the cat burglar steps outside and presses some buttons on her phone. She's wrong; up until now, he hadn't believed it. It'd been easier to ignore before he saw it up close, when she knelt there and touched his face. 

Such a simple, innocent thing, her claws tucked away as not to scratch him. Obvious, too; practiced.

"The Batmobile is on its way," she says, smooth enough for it to almost go over his head. Then he blinks.

"The Batmobile?"

Kyle catches herself. Her gloved fingers drag over her forearm, suddenly impatient.

"That's what Robin used to call it," she says, "And like with most things christened by Robin, it stuck. Who do you think named them 'batarangs'? They don't even come back." 

He furrows his brow as she crouches to look at him again, just watching him breathe. 

The Bat wouldn't. The Bat doesn't fall victim to temptation; but the worrying thing is it might not be temptation. Why tease him when he's unconscious, after all? Why do this when he's not there to be gruff and dismissive, play his part, as it were? Jim's seen them fight. He knows how Kyle operates, and he knows Batman is immune to it. That's the whole point. 

Unless he was wrong.

The purr of an engine interrupts his thoughts just as Kyle tucks away the phone.

"Help me carry him downstairs," she says, playful tone gone. Another uncomfortable glimpse at who she is underneath the sweet drawl, the gentle hoarseness in the back or her throat; he shoves it away with a shake of his head.

She takes the shoulders, leaving him the legs. They walk, step after step, swaying from side to side, and the sheer absurdity of it shuts Jim's mind down until he's only focusing on the task at hand. Hold tight. Keep him steady.

Back in the rain; it's a light drizzle for the moment, but it'll get worse. Water seeps under his collar and his grip almost slides, but he doesn't let it.

"Here," Kyle says, and together they lift him into the gaping mouth of the bulky black tank-car, water gliding off the raised hatch and into the interior. Gordon catches a glimpse of a myriad of screens displaying data, and this trip to the other side of the looking glass is beginning to be too much. 

There is so much he doesn't know. Doesn't want to know. The negative space is there for a reason, not to be filled---they need it, like a kind of cushioning to cover collateral.

He steps back when Kyle vaults over the side and hops into the car beside the unconscious Bat.

"You're going with him?" Gordon asks.

"No," she does something and he realises she's buckling his seatbelt. "He'll be pissed enough as it is. No need to throw me into the equation."

She leans over him, and again Jim feels like he's intruding; but she doesn't do anything this time, just climbs out of the car and lowers the hatch into place. 

The thing maneuvers itself out of the alley and shoots off. He watches it for a bit, then turns to Kyle---only to find himself alone.

*

The window whines a little when she shimmys it open. She should oil it, probably, except she doesn't know how or with what. She's juggled abandoned buildings with trashy apartments and five-star hotels; in one way or another, she never learned the upkeep of anything that qualifies as less than essential. She reminds herself that she should get used to it. The way things are going right now, that is her last flat getting discovered and burned, suggest that she'll be saying here a while.

The tabby is the only one in at the moment. It meows at her, then barrels straight into her legs, pressing and dragging its spine against the back of her calf. Then it runs off. She likes the cuddly ones, but she can appreciate a little space every now and then.

Her skin burns as she takes off the suit; it used to frighten her how thin it is, how easy to pierce. It's nothing like the suit Bruce wears - she designed it to be as light as possible, make her invisible rather than bulletproof. She could probably get her hands on some better materials now, but she's grown so used to the barely noticeable weight of it, the way it bends like a second skin, an extension of her body.

Even if it does leave her feeling naked in front of a cop with a gun. 

She shudders a little. Bruce considers Gordon a friend, but when had Bruce's judgement ever been sound? 

No use dwelling on it now, though. She knows how this goes. All this time she thought he was chasing after her, when it's always been the other way around. She knows better now. 

Her stomach rumbles. She tilts her head under the faucet and drinks; the water runs down the side of her face and into her hair. 

She drops onto the couch, costume still hanging around her hips, and buries her face in her arms. 

Centuries, eons later, she wakes and it's 3:30 am. She breathes around the choked sensation in her throat and pulls a dirty sweatshirt over her naked back, even that scrap of warmth unreasonably good. Curling in on herself a little tighter, she falls asleep again.

This time, it's the sunlight that wakes her. She made it through the night.

She feels tired and sore, and she'd like nothing better than to fall into a fluffy king-size, but her own is covered in clothes and junk just like the rest of the apartment; she hates it here, hates it everywhere, and at the end of the day it's just not worth it.

She pulls the sweatshirt on over her head and ruffles her pixie cut to get the drowsiness out. The top doesn't even smell; she must've dumped it there with everything else on a whim. 

The apartment looks almost nice in the mornings, yellow light coming in through the blinds casting soft aquamarine over the floor. She doesn't want to step on it, it's probably freezing cold - so instead, she gathers herself up into a crouch and leaps lightly over to the armchair. She picks her phone out from underneath one foot (chipped black nail polish; she should redo it, but won't) and looks at the time. Seven-something.

She should check on Bruce. 

"He's still unconscious," Alfred reports. He souds tired. She wonders, just a little guiltily, if he got any sleep at all---then decides she doesn't care. He sounds tentative when he speaks again. "Is there anything you can tell me about what happened to him, Miss Kyle?"

There it is again; she chews her lip, walking along the backrest of her sofa. Foot after foot, chipped nail polish.

"Gordon found him before I did. He said he hit a wall, then fell down into the street." 

"Commissioner Gordon was there?" 

She exhales through her nose, discomfort making her shift her shoulders. 

"Yes. But I don't think he looked, if that's what you---"

"You intervened anyway," the butler sounds more impressed than she deserves, and her jaw clenches involuntarily, "It is appreciated."

"Alfred," she frowns a little, holding the phone with both hands, "He's never fallen before."

"I realise that, Miss Kyle." 

"Not without help, at least." 

"Yes, Miss Kyle." 

"Could you---" call me when he wakes up? As if she has any right to ask. "Actually, never mind. Nice talking to you again." 

"And you as well, Miss Kyle," the calm benevolence in his voice is likely due to the fact she just helped his son; not because he approves any more than he did back then. 

She chuckles, fake but effortlessly honest, mutters a goodbye and hangs up. 


	2. Chapter 2

Bruce wakes to the buzz of fluorescents.

He's in the cave; never a good sign to be waking up in the cave, because---

Yes. There it is. The pull of an IV in his arm, the hard cot underneath him raising his upper body at an angle. His right half twitches when he tries to move. 

It means he didn't make it home last night. Or---before that, even. He opens his eyes and shuts them reflexively, blinded by the white; then, ignoring the thundering pain in his forehead, he forces himself to look.

He's in the bay. He can see his own bare chest, his left arm. Everything else is fuzzy, a blur of LED lights and the cave's familiar gloom.

He allows himself the luxury of closing his eyes against the stark white light. Just until he can string together one coherent thought.

Blurry vision, the blinding pain in his forehead which echoes throughout his skull; head injury, telltale. He breathes, slow and methodical, and for a second he thinks he might be up to opening his eyes again---but the moment the light hits his pupils, he almost retches, stomach flipping with nausea. He feels the blood draining from his face. Cold sweat seeps out onto his skin.

He already knows he woke up too early. Or at least, some part of him acknowledges it, because he's already sitting up, taking the needles out with gentle, studied pulls. His thoughts swim a little when his feet touch the foor, but for the most part, he's fine.

Now---status report.

He thinks back to the last thing he remembers. For a frightening moment, he draws a blank, but this is nothing new---he gives it another few seconds, a minute.

Rain.

He remembers the rain.

"Master Bruce!" someone exclaims, in that not-quite-raised but still alarmed voice. Then there's footsteps on metal, and Alfred's gently pushing him back down onto the cot.

"You're awake early," he remarks, and Bruce catches the sight-image-memory of a disapprovingly raised eyebrow. "And already pulled out your IVs. Wonderful." 

"'M fine," he slurs. His throat feels like someone took sandpaper to it. 

"Open your eyes, please."

More blinding light. Bruce frowns away from it. Alfred clicks his tongue.

"Pupils are normal. The cowl suffered the worst of it, it seems," he moves his head towards the battered thing, dumped on a metal table along with more broken gear.

Bruce stares a little at the damage, the inner layers showing from underneath the missing shell. Then he looks at Alfred again, absurdly reminded of why you should always wear a helmet while riding your bike, Master Bruce. The pain flares up and he closes his eyes again. Feels like mismatched cogs grinding together between his ears.

"What happened?" he manages. Alfred has given up his attempts to get him to lay down, and Bruce compromises by staying seated on the cot, feet suspended a few inches off the floor.

"You fell," Alfred says, stern.

He touches his knee. He could've sworn it was scratched up, blood seeping out in little spheres of red, too small too trickle.

"That is what I gathered, at least," he adds, looking at Bruce with harried worry, "What do you remember?"

"Rain," Bruce says, stupidly. He scolds himself, clenches his fists against he firm cot. Focuses. "I must have been drugged. Did you take a blood sample?" 

"Naturally," Alfred inhales with a whistle of air in his nose, "Nothing came up. Except for the standards."

"Let me have a look at it."

"Absolutely not. You only arrived at the cave seven hours ago. A remaining seventeen of recovery and observation is non-negotiable." 

Bruce opens his mouth to argue, but thinks better of it. Then, he glances up at Alfred again.

"Arrived?"

"Yes," Alfred braces for something, it's in the shape of his shoulders, the position of his arms. "When the cowl was damaged, I lost all contact with you, and I was forced to send for... reinforcements."

Bruce mulls it over, neck going slack and head falling between his shoulders. Thinking feels like wading through jelly.

"Dick?" he asks, finally, twisting his face up to check his reaction. 

Alfred joins his hands behind his back.

"Miss Kyle, sir."

And it shouldn't feel like the ground's been pulled out from under his feet, but it does; he makes an effort to keep still, but that's just theatre. It doesn't matter half as much that he can hide it than that he's feeling it in the first place. 

"Selina's in Gotham?"

"Apparetly so." Alfred pauses. "By some luck. Though she did mention that it was the Commissioner who found you. She only intercepted you." 

"Was she here?"

"No." Alfred doesn't say anything else.

*

Fifteenth night, the signal's still up. Selina has not chosen a target.

Her mind supplies easily. A ruby the size of an eyeball, named the Third Eye by someone with likely no understanding of the concept. A matched set of diamonds cut to fit an earring design lost to time. The mystery is half the charm.

She looks out the window, at the bat in the sky, and chews her lips.

It used to be that if he caught her, she'd have to fight him, and her skills had nothing on his. She could get the upper hand if she surprised him - which she's always been good at, admittedly - but those fights still ended with some pretty severe bruising on her side.

If he caught her now, he'd just be disappointed.

She grits her teeth. He'd look at her in that analytical, patient way he has, like he's trying to understand---more frustrated with himself than he is with her.

Disappointed. She did drop everything to go pick him up when he was hurt; that has to count for something. Maybe that something happens to be a very pretty ruby.

And it strikes her, then, that there will never be a better time. The Bat is down. People will catch on if he's gone too long, but for the time being, she's the only opportunist in Gotham aware of the window - and she could do anything. 

Selina stares at the ceiling.

*

In the end, she lingers, and by the time she makes her mind up the gem is already being auctioned. That's never stopped her before, though, so Selina scouts out the location; she's been here already (stolen here already), as to be expected when it's the one and only Gotham Auction House. She needs the money. 

Selina considers her wig collection. Originally, she aims for a false identity---but the more she pictures it, turns it like a little papier-mache model in her hands, the more she sees that this is not a time to be playing it close to the chest. She needs more---she needs a meat shield. The Bat may be out of the picture, but out of all her enemies, he's - and she sees the irony here - the only one she's not actually afraid of.

She chooses the man. He's the son of an out-of-town billionaire fishing for a business deal with Wayne Enterprises, and his name is Francis House. It's easy to stumble in his path at the right party; it's easier to be in invited to the auction the second she expresses a vivid interest in the lost-and-found of history that it is. She doesn't mention the Third Eye and neither does he, which is a good sign. 

And part of her lazily mutters something about knowing where it goes, even if she doesn't get it tonight; part of her says it would be okay if it slipped out from between her claws.

Selina clenches them tight in protest. Nothing gets out. She needs the money.

"Sweetheart, you've got one hell of a grip," Francis laughs, and she squeezes just once more, this time tilting her head back to grin at him. 

She's not twenty-five anymore; not as good as the mysterious-but-ultimately-shallow femme fatale routine. She has to smile at him a moment longer, look at him a little more often: she bats her lashes and mutters in accented English, clinging to his side.

This used to be more fun, she remembers blankly before she can steel herself again. A little girl lost in a game of make-believe.

"Anything in particular you've got your eye on?" Francis asks as they sit down. He's looking to make this more fun for himself; doesn't actually care what they're selling. And if that's the case, then---

And she should've done more research. The familiar turf set her at ease, but now she's pulled taut like a string, staring across the room where Bruce Wayne is looking right back at her. 

Their eyes have met. She's wearing a wig and about thirty pounds of make-up, boob contour included, but she knows it isn't nearly enough.

And she knows this is on her---obviously, what could a guy like Francis House be doing here other than making friends, surely not entertaining his arm candy----but maybe she's getting sloppy, and maybe she doesn't care. Maybe it doesn't... matter. It's just a rock. She can just steal cat food for her babies from the store, it's child's play. 

"What do you think, Amelie?" Francis grins. 

"I just want to see for now," she replies, tearing her gaze away from Bruce.

Her mind dictates that his presence here probably means the heist is off. Her heart dictates that he ought to be in bed.

The announcer gets up on the podium and apologises for the delay. Selina immediately knows he's still playing for time; they start with the jewelry, displayed on young girls walking down the runway.

Francis, though, has already gotten up from their table and is maneuvering her towards Bruce. He's alone, his arms uncharacteristically empty without a woman on one and a man on the other, and his smile is just a little dimmer than usual when Francis approaches with introductions. He doesn't get up to shake hands. 

"If I'm going to be honest with you, I've got one hell of a hangover," he says to Francis in a theatrical whisper, just on the barest side of friendly, "So pardon any lapse in manners, will you?"

Selina puckers her lips. I'll bet. 

He doesn't look---bad, though. Not like his skull is hanging out in pieces, which is what she's been picturing ever since she saw the damage to the cowl. 

"And you," Bruce directs his attention to Selina, or rather Amelie, and smiles so wide his cheeks dimple. She winces. "I don't believe I've had the pleasure."

Francis introduces her. Bruce watches, expertly charming, just enough attention given to pass for awake, then turns to the man and talks shop with about as much interest as he showed 'Amelie'. His eyes don't meet Selina's again. 

He's so good that at some point she starts to wonder if he actually does recognise her----but then Francis' phone rings, and they're alone, and Bruce's eyes go from dull to armour-piercing.

"I thought I might find you here," he murmurs, stepping closer. His champagne flute sits lightly between his fingers, a delicate thing in a hand that could crush it into dust.

Selina leans into his space and laughs against her wrist, because Brucie Wayne is just so funny, and because she needs an excuse to lower her voice.

"Not even a 'thank you'?" She doesn't wait for one. "How's your head?"

"It's fine."

She looks up to inspect it closer, and sure enough, there's a violent purple-blue bruise visible underneath the patchy powder he's wearing to conceal it.

"You need a touch-up." She takes his hand in hers, each individual finger interlocking with a flourish. Maneuvering swiftly between the other guests, she drags him towards the restroom. 

With Bruce, resigned agreement is a personal brand of enthusiasm. 

Selina doesn't enter men's restrooms as a general rule of the thumb. Instead, she takes him upstairs, to the lesser known but still classically beautiful ladies' room there---a long top of gleaming dark green stone stretches underneath a clear mirror of matching length. The reflection doubles and triples into oblivion on the ceiling, where a matching Selina looks down at her from her inverted world, hand tightly clutching her own Bruce. 

She sits him down on the cold polished stone, his long legs outstretched while she stands between them. The reflected jacket pulls across the line of his shoulders. 

"Did you at least wait for the swelling in your brain to go down?" she sighs, picking her concealer out of her purse. 

"Alfred kept you updated." He sounds wary.

Selina draws lines on his bruised temple, hoping it won't hurt as much as dots would. Not that he would flinch, either way.

"No. Didn't take an intellectual, though. I saw the cowl. And the wall."

"What did Gordon say?"

"I think he had a moral crisis. First you drop into his lap, then I jump into it. It's a lot to ask of the police commissioner." 

Bruce wrinkles his nose. Not for the first time, he reminds Selina of a displeased cat.

"I owe him one," he says, grim. 

The worries coming into her mind aren't of the breed he'd accept, so she frowns a little and misses her window to say that Gordon owes the Bat a lot more than 'one'.

With deft fingers, she blends the concealer in, relieved to find it matches his skin tone perfectly. That man never did get much sun. She covers up the purple-green sleep loss under his eyes while she's here. He's not quite the same person without it.

"Nothing came up in my blood," he admits of his own volition. 

"Did you run it again?"

"I ran it five times."

She doesn't miss a beat.

"Old injury acting up? I seem to remember you meeting a wall face-first once or twice before." 

He doesn't even deny it, brow furrowing.

"Could be." 

"There," Selina gives his forehead one final tap before stepping away to admire her work. 

He stops her, one hand curling around her wrist, careful but firm.

"Selina," he says, his tone heavy, and she sighs. He doesn't have to actually accuse her, but it's tradition. She's still bracing for it when instead, he asks---"Why are you in Gotham?"

Which is a polite way to start this conversation. She chews on some lies. If she tells him the truth about her other apartment, he might offer her a place to stay, a place better than her ratty hole in the wall, and she doesn't want his charity. It's enough that she has to endure his mercy. Give in to temptation again and again like a sinner.

"I want the Third Eye," she says in the end. At least it's true.

He closes his eyes for a moment, then covers them with a hand. She almost thinks he's done but then he sighs, too, and she perches her fists on her hips and glares at him.

"What?"

His jaw works, muscle and bone moving under his skin. "Selina, you didn't come to Gotham for a trinket."

She feels it happening, like a fall you catch up with only once you're too far gone to recover. She falters. 

"Alright, fine. My house got busted. I had to run." 

"Where are you staying?"

"My old place."

His eyebrows rise. A lot of memories there. Selina would make a joke, but---she just doesn't.

"Is there anything I can do to help?" he asks quietly.

"Yeah." She smooths out his lapels. "You can look after yourself, for once."

They leave the restroom separately, seven minutes apart.

*

She didn't expect seeing him again would bring dreams, but it does.

She's in the suit. That's wrong, she thinks dimly, because she's not wearing her goggles. Her hair is long, it brushes her cheek. Bruce looks at her over his shoulder from where he's sitting on the medical cot, and immediately she strains to wake up - she doesn't exactly know why this is wrong, there's just something so awful in the air, something like a half-woven understanding of a tragedy.

"Again."

Bruce turns to a boy that wasn't there before, and the boy is Dick, but he doesn't look like Dick at all. She couldn't say why, because she knows it's him and she can't recall any other face--- but it's still misplaced.

"Slowly, this time," Bruce adds, cold.

"I said I," Dick gasps, out of breath, "I said I'm," and he shoves a paper at Bruce's stomach. 

Bruce looks down at it, big black glove holding the rumpled note.

"Sorry?"

Dick nearly bursts into tears.

"You got hurt real bad," he says, voice breaking, "---hit your head like that, I didn't, I---"

"Dick," Bruce sets the paper aside. "What happened wasn't your fault. And I'm alright now."

"Yeah," Dick sniffles, wiping his nose with his sleeve, "I'm sorry---sorry for freaking out, I don't know... I'll go."

He turns on his heel and walks away quickly.

Selina enters the scene.

"Bruce?" she calls out, then she's on the cot next to him, looking down at the paper. 

It just says 'sorry', in smudged blue ballpoint pen. 

"I think you should go talk to him."

"It's been almost a year. He should be used to the risks by now." Bruce looks across the cave, at nothing. "I told him, I'm fine."

"It's not just that. He got scared."

"For no reason."

"You of all people should know," she looks at him, "Fear isn't always rational. That doesn't make it any less real."

He grits his teeth. 

"That's why he needs to learn to control it."

"For fuck's sake, Bruce, just go hug your kid," she growls. Her skin prickles; she doesn't know the first thing about parenting, but anything's better than the image she has in her mind of Dick crying alone in his room; it's too familiar. He has a guardian, and that should mean something. 

Bruce glances at her, a little startled, a little heated.

"Don't tell me how to raise my son," he says firmly, and that too is wrong; or not wrong, just out of place---Bruce doesn't call him that. At least not out loud.

And he turns to the screens growing like a tree around his desk, almost to spite her. Selina grits her teeth and glares at the back of his head.

Then she trots up the stairs, claws scraping the handrail with a screech, nails on a chalkboard. She hopes she makes him frown. She throws the door open and goes to the lift, and from there, to the back of the grandfather clock.

The manor is quiet and still. Time never quite passes here; bends, maybe, catches on it like a stream on a stone protruding from the water. It's one of the many reasons she loves it. It's one of the many reasons Dick must hate it. A kid in a house of horrors.

It occurs to her, then, that she's never been to his room. The anger falls away as she steps through the halls on well-worn rubber soles. She finds the right door, three down from the master bedroom, and knocks. 

No-one answers. For a moment, she thinks she might have the wrong one after all - god knows Wayne Manor has enough guest rooms to house a village - but then she hears the pitter-patter of footsteps, and the door handle moves out from under her fingers.

A small, red face looks up at her. For a second, it looks surprised---then extremely disappointed.

"Sorry," not-quite-Dick says, blinking, "I thought you were Alfred." He blinks again, and she realises it's because he's trying to get rid of the tears sticking his lashes together. "He makes me hot cocoa sometimes."

I can do that, Selina thinks.

"I can make you some hot cocoa." It comes out---odd. Strangled. "Come with me."

She wonders if she should take his hand, but he's a big boy now. That's stupid. 

"You don't even like me," Dick says, rebellious. 

"What gave you that idea?" she throws over her shoulder, marching down to the kitchen with the kid at her side. Big house. Impossibly big in her dreams.

"You're hardly ever here, and when you are, you don't talk to me. You just talk to Bruce about cases. But I'm his partner, and---" he cuts himself off just as he's beginning to raise his voice, "Sorry."

"It's okay," they still haven't reached the goddamn kitchen. 

"I didn't mean to yell."

"You didn't yell." She swallows. "Look, you're upset. I understand. I care about him, too."

"You do?"

"Bruce doesn't talk about me much, does he," she says dryly.

Kitchen. Drawer.

"Shelf," Dick supplies in a small voice.

She gets the cocoa. Milk. Stove. Easy. 

"He talks about you," he adds. "When you steal stuff."

Selina sighs. She forces a smile as she turns away from the stove and looks at Dick again.

He's sitting on a countertop, cape and all, unevenly spray painted boots swinging.

"Well, he talks about you all the time," she says. She exhales a bit when he brightens up. "Yeah. He's very proud of you." 

And he should clearly tell you that more often, she adds in her thoughts, chewing her cheek.

Dick evaluates her with sad blue eyes.

"I messed up tonight," he admits.

Selina gives him his cup of hot cocoa. He holds it in both hands, close to his face.

"I should've done something." He goes on, drink cooling. "He fell. Or more like, a guy pushed him off a ledge. He couldn't even get up at first, he just lay there. And---" he's calm now, quietly introspective. "I've seen it before."

She balks. "Oh."

Dick's watching his shoes.

"I actually never thought about it until now," he admits. "But he could die. Any night. And if he dies---that would, that would be---" his eyes well up with tears.

"He won't," Selina blurts. Now Dick's gaze is trained on her like there's nothing else in the world worth his attention. "He's not that easy to kill. Trust me."

He considers this for a long time, sipping his hot cocoa.

"I guess you would know, huh," he says finally, with a spectacular foam moustache on his upper lip, "Thanks for the cocoa."

She wakes up. 

She didn't know Bruce's name until years later. Then Dick left, and there came the nights at the manor, the weeks, months of peace and stifled regret. And it's all so shamefully jumbled in her mind, those borrowed bits of conversations that were or should have been, stolen on rooftops and in alleyways and from behind masks. 

She never made Dick hot cocoa. 

*

The night is cold. Gordon stays in, rubbing his hands together over his desk, huffing on them. The chill should be welcome after a heatwave, but it just tires him out these days. Makes his knees creak.

"Sir," a beat cop pokes his head in the door. "He's on the roof."

Jim grumbles a little, playing for time, then gets up and paws at his chair to peel his coat from the backrest. He pulls it on as he makes his way up the narrow stairs to the rooftop, boots clanging on the metal.

He steps out into the Gotham night.

There are grey wisps of clouds in the sky, not enough to obscure the pale round moon. A halo of red and orange surrounds it, a bit of blue. Maybe he's just seeing things after eight hours of staring at paper.

The Bat is curled up in his usual spot, an angular black shadow on the red brick. His mouth is a thin line.

"Commissioner," he greets quietly. This is uncommon.

Gordon remarks on it. The Bat turns away.

"I wanted to thank you." The cape snaps in the wind, enveloping him like a cocoon.

"No need," Jim squints against the strengthening gusts and reaches for a cigarette. The box is empty.

"Kyle's the one you should be thanking," he adds after some thought, "Even if she is on the run from the law at the moment."

"I know."

"Won't be hunting her down any time soon, though. Will you." He eyes the Bat expectantly, but he's still looking ahead. Silent as always, until---

"No." He turns his face away. 

Jim sighs. He knows his lines so well he almost chokes on them, and in a rush of anger, he throws the script out the window.

"How's your head?" 

"Healing." He looks at Jim with pale, unseeing white lenses. "Tell me exactly what happened that night."

Gordon does. He even mentions the seatbelt, and the Bat turns his face away so quickly Jim almost thinks he said something wrong; but then he sees the man's cheek rising.

He's never seen the Bat smile. It's more unnerving than he expected.

"This isn't like you," Jim allows himself to say. 

The Bat shoots a cloud of vapour out his nose in a sigh. It lights up gold against the street lamps.

"Jim," he bows his head, "She's not what you think she is."

"Well." Gordon pulls the thickly polluted night air in through his teeth. "Maybe. I'm in no place to be talking about double standards."

"I'll make sure she stays out of trouble," he promises, shifting his weight in what Gordon knows to be preparation for a jump, and then he's gone. 

The Bat doesn't give in to temptation, but the man behind him might. In some way, Jim had always thought of him as a little bit insane; a man without any semblance of a normal life, an outsider. It's what they profile him as down in the department. 

But---he clearly has a team and money behind him, and that too makes sense given the sheer amount of gear he carries. 

It's what fails to line up where the Bat is concerned, time and time again - a loner, but never without backup. An unemployed social recluse with enough money to afford custom bulletproof armour and beyond-military-grade equipment.

And it does add up, if you spend some time staring at the numbers. Psychological trauma, near-infinite money, and a smokescreen day job. Theatre. 

Jim doesn't look too long anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> honestly, this fic is mostly for me, but if you like it then that makes me really happy. Thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

The cave is too small. It looms above him like a threat, the ceiling dark and heavy. Breathing is difficult. Not impossible - never impossible, not as long as there isn't anything actually around his neck, as long as he controls his lungs, he can breathe---

He breathes. It's a chore. His chest feels like it's constricting, a constant pressure that keeps him from inhaling fully.

He pulls more air in, fills his lungs to the brim to prove to himself that he can. For a second, the weight falters, then returns with a vengeance.

He knows what this is, and it's not an issue. Nothing he can't deal with. He sits down at the computer and inputs the password.

His heart is pounding, now.

He sighs and sinks back into the chair. He's not getting any work done like this, and whatever the problem is, he needs to deal with the symptoms.

Toeing off his boots at the edge of the mat, he sits down. Dick had this silly name for it. Criss-cross applesauce.

In---out. In, until his chest strains, and out. 

In---Everything that troubles is within the rising tide. Out. It hits like a hurricane, almost knocks him clean over---stairs, door---crowbar.

It doesn't withdraw. The tide doesn't withdraw and he curls in on himself, clutching his head in both hands, silent. It takes him fifteen minutes to get back up. 

Anger is one thing. Anger is hot, scorching even, it burns bright and fast or quiet and slow; but eventually, it has to run out of fuel.

The intent to kill is cold. It fills your body like molten metal and settles there, in your bones, like ice at your core. It's calm. It's patient when it has to be, almost like it knows its will is definite; like it knows it can't be defeated, only sated.

His one rule. The one he can't break without rendering everything else meaningless. The one rule he clings to like a lifeline hoping it'll save him from some abstract damnation. As if it's for anyone but himself; as if the world would not be better in every conceivable way without some people in it.

He blinks, feeling his right eyelid quiver. Magnesium deficiency. That's all it is.

He runs the tests again. 

"Blood does not lie, Master Bruce," Alfred scolds from over his shoulder.

Bruce jerks sideways a little, but stops himself before he can aim the gauntlet. 

"Jesus," he mutters, half to himself, and tears off the gloves. He throws them further down the desk. 

Alfred looks at him expectantly.

"How did the meeting with the commissioner go?"

"I'm going to have to look at the scene myself," Bruce growls, "I was delayed."

"God forbid you take the rest of the week off, sir." 

"Something is wrong with me, Alfred," he purses his lips, staring at the sample. 

"Other than the fractured skull, you mean."

Bruce pulls on the cowl. "The fall was a consequence. I need to find the problem."

*

The wall looks---well, it's mostly just a wall, except for some crumbled red brick around a small dip. Anyone not looking for it would miss it with ease.

That is to say, it's exactly the same as when she came back to look at it almost a week ago, after Gordon left.

Seeing Bruce must have brought back some buried guilt, and the only way she knows to deal with it is by convincing herself she's doing everything she can; in this case, that apparently means staring at a hole in the wall. 

She feels stupid.

With a sigh, she recounts what she knows. The grappling hook - a hook in name only, it's an electromagnet - hit the chimney of the next building over and left a small dent; then Bruce must have lost control over the glide, or released the button reeling him in. The suddenly-immobile line loses tension, catches on the edge of the roof, Bruce hits the wall at an arch. The electromagnet releases and returns, sending Bruce falling down to the pavement.

Was the grapple faulty? It seems like the most likely explanation right after a drug in his system, though even if it'd failed, Bruce should've been able to save himself from that fall. 

She checks the ground again as well, though if there was any evidence then the rain has most certainly washed it away by now. She climbs up the stairs to the abandoned building.

False hopes.

There's a faint hiss of moving air and a shadow lands on the windowframe, black wings spread out behind it. Big boots crush the remains of the glass shards sticking out where the pane used to be. She wonders when it got knocked out.

"Let me guess." Bruce looks at her with flat white lenses. "Nothing."

"The grapple?" she asks, resigned.

"It was the first thing I checked. Works perfectly." He steps across the room, soundless on the rotting floorboards. "You don't have to do this, Selina."

"Idle hands," she remarks with a sigh, watching him, "And since you're back in business, I can't go around stealing rubies."

"So instead, you're doing detective work."

Selina feels a jolt of something ugly run through her like a current.

"I'm worried about you," she says, trying to keep the actual worry from her voice, "Did you think I could drop everything to help you, and then just forget about it?" She chews the inside of her cheek until she's surprised she doesn't taste blood. "Getting that call was... it wasn't easy, Bruce."

He looms there, in the corner, big and imposing---or he would be, if she hadn't carried him down those very stairs only days ago, helpless like a rag doll.

"I'll tell Alfred not to---"

"No," she marches up to him. "Don't misunderstand me on purpose. You know I hate that."

His jaw works under the cowl.

"Then what do you want from me?" he asks, modulator tinting his voice with a growl she knows isn't really there.

Selina opens her mouth, but her throat closes on the words. She searches for different ones until she finds something that seems like it might actually come out, and tries, defeated.

"You know," she slumps down, "Maybe I shouldn't be interfering."

He's watching her. "Maybe you shouldn't."

"If you do need my help," she says in passing, already headed for the window, "I'm here." 

His hand in the crook of her elbow stops her. In response, she hooks her arm around his neck and rises on her toes to press a kiss into his cheek.

Just to remind him.

*

But Bruce turns into it like he needs it, gently catching her between his head and his shoulder, hand rising to rest on her shoulder blades. Selina takes the cue; she sinks into the crook of his neck, burying her nose there, arm sliding down until she's just holding the other side of his face, fingers cupping his jaw. She presses against him, barely a brush through the armour, but it's enough to know she's there. 

And she---she seems to need it too. Or maybe that's just what he tells himself; but it doesn't matter, because they're alone and nobody has to know. 

The strangest part of it is that he doesn't feel like kissing her. He doesn't want to take her home. Home is haunted and he is tired; a new migraine is developing in his forehead, a white-hot pain drilling into his skull. Her cheek against his collarbone, her nose at his throat---the calm of it---he exhales, moving his temple to hers. 

Sleep drowns him like blood loss. He feels so impossibly tired; lighter with every second, he's floating. Though he hasn't moved, he has to catch his balance.

"Bats?" she mutters when he steps away. Her hands follow him, splayed on his chest. "Are you okay?"

"Dizzy," he says, closing his eyes. It doesn't help. Up and down switch places and he looks around again, trying to reorient himself. 

"Okay," she says firmly, "You need to sit down."

"I'm fine."

"Sit down," she puts one hand on his back and one on his stomach, trying to guide him down onto the floor. "Breathe."

For a depressingly long time, everything just swims. He stays on his feet.

"Can't stay here," he huffs.

"Come on," she takes his hand, thin long fingers in his, claws against the metal on his knuckles. 

The way over feels like a fever dream, but every step he takes away from that alley lifts a piece of the weight off his back. He follows Selina through a window in a back street (ignores the pink neons of female silhouettes, ignores the faint thumps of dance music reverberating from the basements) and he breathes.

Something brushes against the inside of his calf. Before he can jump away from it, a loud, curious meow follows.

Selina keeps the lights off until she's made sure all the windows are covered. Then she flips on a small lamp in the corner of the living room. It's a mess.

"We can't all have butlers," she says, like it explains the clutter piling on the chairs and coffee table. Then she drags him over to the sofa and sits him down like a petulant child, skin shining in the gloom.

The same cat as before - a tabby - jumps up onto the armrest, watching Bruce with big round pupils. 

With one swift movement, Selina releases the clasp on the cowl. He helpfully pulls it off and tries to blink the drowsiness out of his eyes, but the blinks grow longer, until he's just sitting there with his eyes closed.

"Bruce?" her voice comes from far away.

He is so tired.

"Blood doesn't lie," he growls, leaning his head on the hand covering his eyes, "And it's happened again."

"Good thing you weren't grappling anywhere this time," she says with a thin smile in her voice, and from the direction it's coming he deduces she's sitting or crouching by his feet. "Headache?"

He nods.

"Temple?"

Shake.

He hears two faint thumps, then feels the warmth of her breath on his neck. There's a touch on either side of the bridge of his nose---a touch that quickly turns into pressure.

"Better?" 

He waits for a moment, but all he can feel is a slight discomfort in the nasal bone. He shakes his head again. 

The touch moves up to a point above his eyebrows. His uncomfortably shrinked skull expands as soon as she presses down, and he lets one small sigh of relief escape his mouth. He tells himself it's just to let her know she's helping.

"You need a doctor," she says softly. Her voice is close. "Do you hear me? You need to go see a doctor."

He finds he can talk if he only stops trying to think about the words. Consequently, all that comes out is a very childish, very whiny:

"Not right now."

Selina laughs. He blacks out with his neck curving against the backrest, and the last thing that registers is someone lowering him down onto his side.

*

He knew it would come to this eventually.

His dreams, when they're not nightmares, are usually half-lucid; he's aware of discrepancies, but chooses to ignore them. Full lucidity is difficult to achieve and usually ends with him accidentally waking, which isn't optimal with chronic insomnia.

Besides, in the dream, it's easy to let it slide---sweep it under the carpet along with a whole string of missed details and fuzzy spaces his memory doesn't make an effort to fill.

He can't help but watch it happen, even if he could intervene. And it starts innocuous enough.

He's home, in his bedroom, getting ready to go out. Cold white gold cufflinks between his fingertips, a gleaming set picked out from a strip of velvety padding in its designated drawer. He looks up, at his reflection in the mirror, and turns his face from side to side. Nothing. He does take care to protect it.

Bruce beams at his reflection, fine-tuning the smile. There's a new dimple on the left side of his mouth. When did that get there? He smiles again, wider this time. It's a chore, but at least it doesn't make him nauseous the way it did when he was ten, doing this exact same thing standing on his toes in front of the bathroom mirror.

Unhurriedly, he reaches down and looks at the displayed cufflinks again. Aside from the ones he's wearing, there's another pair missing. The empty slots look up at him accusingly.

He sighs. 

"Jason," he calls out, purposely calm.

Nothing. 

"Jason, I know you're there. Come in."

On the far side of the room, a door cracks open.

"You got eyes in the back of your head or somethin'?" a defensive young voice rolls across the dark wood flooring.

Bruce indicates the mirror with a movement of his chin and raises an eyebrow. Looking embarrassed, the boy skulks closer, feet shuffling and hands in the pockets of his hoodie.

"Are you sure you don't want to come with me?" Bruce asks, adjusting his collar.

"No way."

Bruce sighs, a quick tired breath soft enough to miss, or so he hopes---until he notices Jason tense up out of the corner of his eye.

"Well, it's your choice," he adds, turning to face the boy. "I'm going to need those back, then."

"What do ya mean?" the boy fakes, not very convincingly.

"The cufflinks, Jason."

"I didn't take your fucking cufflinks."

Bruce breathes in. He recalls his hours spent pouring over adoption resources, talking to counsellors, visiting websites. He (unwittingly) thinks about how much easier it was to deal with Dick's crying and separation anxiety.

Neither quite like Bruce, in that regard, but then again he wasn't adopted by a stranger.

"If you did have them," he says gently, "What would you do with them?"

"I don't---"

"If you did."

Jason frowns, apprehensive.

"Nothing, I guess. Keep 'em." He ducks his head, shoves his hands deeper in his pockets. "In case I needed money."

He keeps his voice level. "And do you need money?"

Jason looks downright guilty.

Bruce waits for him to make eye contact again before speaking.

"Jason, you're here to stay."

Cold runs up Bruce's throat. The boy is still watching him with wary eyes.

"You're not mad."

"No."

"Just, uh," Jason looks at him from under a furrowed brow, "What would it take for me to make you mad? Like, actually mad?"

Bruce straightens up, privately hoping he can still be an authority figure after this. "You couldn't make me that mad if you tried," he says.

A beat passes.

"You took the cufflinks to see how I'd react," he adds. It takes a lot - more than he expected, more than it probably should - to keep his calm, but he does. And it's not anger he feels, either---it's fear, and worry, and self-doubt. It's the voice in his head telling him it's his fault. "This is me reacting. I'd like them back. Please." 

Jason squints even more.

"Never seen you ask nicely before."

And there it is. Bruce lowers his eyes, thinks for a long time.

"Jason," he says slowly, and picks up his gaze. He thinks of Alfred gently taking him by the shoulders when he was a boy, but Jason is not Bruce. He decides against it. "Listen to me. I will never hurt you. Never. I only hurt---"

"Criminals?" Jason's eyebrows fly up. "I am a criminal! I stole from you!" He points to the side, like his life is painted on the wall. "How am I different?"

Bruce takes his wrist and gently lowers the trembling arm. 

"You just are."

"How do you know that?" the boy demands.

"I have an eye for these things." 

"That's bullshit," he whispers, but he seems---less frantic. "An eye. That's stupid."

But it doesn't end there. It can't; life went on after that, stubbornly kept going even though if it were up to him he'd stop and just stay there, with Jason looking at him like he was the entire world.

He can't stop it from rolling, though he wants to try. It gets more and more chaotic as he surfaces---or maybe it's his mind coming through to point out the overlap as he not-quite-wakes, hands pushing on plastic wrap. 

"It doesn't work, Bruce!" Jason shouts out of nowhere, and for a moment he's confused. 

He's older. Taller. He's gotten a certain sharpness about his shoulders, definition in his jaw where it wasn't before. Harsh underneath the white artificial lights in the cave. It's right about here that Bruce remembers beginning to lose Dick, and he wants it to be right this time, he wants it to work. So he tries.

"Jay---"

"No, you listen to me!" something about his voice---he's wearing the mask, that's the problem, and he looks---"The system is broken! I thought you understood that! I thought that's why you were doing this whole thing, because you knew that Gotham would destroy itself if you didn't! But didn't you ever stop to consider that throwing criminals in prison won't do shit if they can walk right out the next day?"

Bruce is feeling the years and injuries and bruising under his suit. He leans against the desk.

"I understand you're upset, but you need to get your emotions under control," he says.

"Oh, like you do?" the mask---god, he can't tell if it's Jason or Dick, he really can't---the shouting---"Like you do, when you stay all quiet and composed and then go beat the shit out of people instead?"

"I use only as much violence as necessary."

"Yeah, right," the boy scoffs. "If you really believed that, you wouldn't be using violence at all. Admit it, sometimes you just want to punch something. And it's awfully convenient that you get to do it as part of your goddamn crusade."

And that does sound like Dick, but looks like Jason, and---his mind breaks in two---

"For once, Bruce, just once admit that sometimes you just want to kill---" 

Jason----

"Jason!" he shouts.

He doesn't know why now. Why not two sentences ago. Why at all. 

"That's enough," he begins in a normal voice, but the boy, the goddamn boy interrupts, and----"I said that's enough!"

Jason pushes a metal table, sends it wheeling to the side with a clatter of surgical tools.

Bruce could say that he does want to kill them, sometimes. The worst of them. He does punch out teeth and break bones where he feels it's deserved, and that alone is damning. That Jason is right, that Bruce has thought about it a thousand times, and still does; but instead of admitting it, he just looks down at his hands splayed on the desk and breathes. 

"Go." 

"You can't throw me out of here." 

He could say it shook him too. Seeing---seeing whatever it was this time, but not only that---feeling the way he did, cold and ruthless, indisputably justified in any act of violence he might commit. But he can't get it out. Jason, Dick---they need to hear it, but he can't, not even for them.

He hears a sob. He turns around. Dick - ten years old, red-nosed and bawling - looks back at him.

"You can't throw me out," he repeats in a small voice, wiping at his nose with a snotty yellow glove, blood pouring down from his shoulder, "Please don't make me leave."

He covers his face with his hands for a moment, tries to make sense of it all and fails. Deep within a fever dream, reality means nothing.

"Dick," he gestures the boy closer, impossibly tired. "Come here."

Like a red-and-green arrow, Dick shoots across the platform and cannons into Bruce's side, thin arms wrapping around him.

*

He wakes from the impact to a world bathed in blue. It's the middle of the night, but his eyes are well adjusted; he can see everything in the room, head of dark hair leaned back against his legs included.

Selina's sitting down on the floor, her knees folded to her chest and her back against the front of the sofa. 

"Selina," he whispers.

"Go back to sleep," she whispers back without turning.

He scoffs quietly. Like hell.

She hears. "Nightmare?"

He shifts onto his back. "There's no reason for you to keep helping me," his voice stays so low it almost hurts his throat. "It's a waste of your time."

"Bruce?"

"Yes."

"You could've just brought me in," she moves her head, but he still can't see her face. "But you didn't. Now, I don't know how much of it was because you thought I was cute, but it doesn't matter. The fact I'm not in prison means I get to choose what I do with my time. And, anyway..." she trails off all of a sudden, and the halt is definite. She doesn't even move.

He breathes in the silence, slow and thoughtful.

"I didn't think you were coming back."

Her answer is brisk and confident.

"I'm willing to risk more this time around."

"Why?"

He resists the urge to prop himself up on his elbow to look at her as he waits. It feels like even the slightest movement of his head could trigger another migraine.

"I missed you," she says finally. "I ran from you because I thought I had to, and then I missed you." She laughs. "Irony."

"You ran from me."

"Well, I sure as hell didn't run from the police," she chuckles, but it quickly fades. "It was that voice in the back of my mind, Bruce. Telling me that you'd get tired of me, tie me up while I slept and drop me off at Blackgate."

Not a surprise. Still.

"What's changed?"

"The voice is gone," she mutters. "Truth be told, I don't think it had much to do with you to begin with."

The armour was not designed to be slept in, and it's pushing into his flesh in all the wrong places. He moves to take off his gauntlets, but even that is enough to send needles of pain through his forehead.

"Just leave it," Selina grumbles, all elbows and knees for a while as she adjusts her position to face him. She peels off the gloves with careful effort, trying different angles and latches, never forcing anything.

He doesn't feel like correcting or guiding her. He just watches. When his hands are free, he trails his fingers over her knuckles, and she doesn't move away. 

"Get up here," he says, authoritative. 

Selina laughs a little; it is funny, her doing something because he commands it. Like an inside joke between them which neither has to remark on.

She climbs up and nestles herself against his side, more on him than on the actual sofa. He feels her mouth on his cheek.

"We can't---," he says in a tone that indicates more to come, but the pause stretches, and she retreats. Her head rests peacefully on his chest, stilling like she's cast in bronze. "I can't pick up where we left off."

"Did something happen while I was gone? Someone?" she asks, in that terrible fake-playful voice. 

He doesn't move. "Not exactly." 

"Well, bring me up to speed, then."

He grants her silence, short and dismissive. The regret will come later---for now, he just feels vacant.

"Okay," Selina can be many things; most of them dangerous, and most people don't get to see her capacity for gentleness. 

It's wasted on him. He doesn't want her to be gentle with him. She lays down again, cheek and hand against his chest.

"It's okay."

He wants her to tear it from his heart, make him cough it up. He wants her to take the awful dark thing inside of him and drag it out into the daylight.

But she doesn't. Maybe she's just as afraid of it as he is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for comments and kudos, they really make my day.


	4. Chapter 4

The Bat's vanishing act is the stuff of legends, but Selina never particularly appreciated waking to an empty room. He doesn't even leave notes; not that she's known many men who leave notes, but still.

Maybe it's payback for all those times she left him first.

She's not particularly upset, though. There is such a---clear distinction between Bruce and everyone else she's been with. Almost laughable, if it wasn't unsettling as all hell. Ms P with her sweat-drenched nights or Mr H with his sparkling conversation, all nothing, fractions, pieces of Bruce that she keeps finding and gluing together. There's gold and then there's blue diamonds. 

Then again, maybe it's time to face reality and accept that Bruce might, quite simply, not like her as much as she likes him. And they're not teenagers. She can deal with that. It's good to have him around as whatever he might choose to be to her, regardless of her own feelings. And Jesus, when did she start thinking about Bruce in terms of usefulness? Bruce isn't---

Isn't everyone else.

She puts her arms around herself and feels like crying, though of course she doesn't. She used to know what she is; it shouldn't be so hard to go back to that. This is what she does, she thinks methodically, drumming out the words on her thigh---she uses people. Feeling bad about her own nature doesn't change it. 

*

She picks up her phone and thumbs through the news tab. Of course, there's already been a reported Catwoman sighting, but no photos; nothing to worry about. Other than that, temperatures dropping and constant storms indicate an early autumn. No matter how many murders get committed around pumpkin season, Gotham still loves Halloween.

If she were younger, she might've attended a party as herself. Bruce wouldn't be caught dead doing something so plainly stupid, and just the thought of his tired disapproval lifts her mood.

Then she smells smoke.

It's difficult to say exactly where it's coming from, but a second later she doesn't have to guess; something in the kitchen ticks and explodes, sending a wave of heat barreling through the apartment. 

She leaps to her feet, looking for the fire extinguisher, but if she ever had one then she must've used it already; and the wall of fire spreading from the kitchen doesn't look like it's going to wait for her to find a spare. There's another explosion, and a series of smaller ones, it sounds like they're inside the wall--- and Selina doesn't think this time, just grabs the two cats she can see and jumps out onto the fire escape.

She gets a faceful of claws at the rough handling, shallow cuts over her jaw. The perpetrator clings to her clothes, and she ignores the pain as she rushes down the rusted stairs barefoot, fire roaring behind her.

Despite all common sense, she stops to look back, the dreadful sight of it finally reaching out to touch her. She can't count the times this has happened, times she's turned and clenched her teeth and ran.

She stands on the fire escape, watching the angry red flames licking out of the windows.

The two frightened cats in her arms are both curling their claws into her suit, piercing leather and skin. Blood is running down the side of her neck where the tabby lashed out that first time; if anyone ever thought cats were harmless, then they'd never been scratched by a cat that meant harm. 

She braves the remaining stairs and steps down onto the wet asphalt of the alleyway. With both arms occupied, she hadn't taken her phone or wallet. She stares down at her bare toes flattened pale against the street.

She exhales and counts her options.

There's always Rita, further down Park Row. Not far. Twenty minutes on foot or so.

She breathes and breathes, and then walks. Her feet hurt. She considers hitching a ride, but quickly decides against it. She's got legs. She can walk.

The white cat on her left arm kicks at her, light but decisive. 

"Yeah, okay," Selina tells it and lets the arm go limp, dropping the feline on the pavement. It lands with grace and doesn't look at her again as it runs off, into the streets.

She looks down at the tabby.

"What about you?" she asks. "Gonna abandon ship too?"

The tabby sniffs at the bloody claw marks it left on her jaw, then gets distracted by a flickering streetlight.

*

"Jesus, what happened to you?"

Rita's put on some serious weight since Selina last saw her. She's shaped like a teardrop, and trying to hide it with one of those loose mom-cardigans. 

"Hi," Selina says. 

"Come in, honey, come in," Rita waves her hand around as a cue for Selina to take it. "I heard you were in town. Where are your shoes?"

Selina casts her gaze over the home. It's smaller than she remembers, shrinked by a bike in the hallway and some new standing lamps. Rita has always had a thing for standing lamps. There are narrow stairs up to the second floor, squeezed in next to a half-empty bookcase.

"It happened again," Selina says, unsure what she's feeling or how to sound. All she knows is that she's shaking. "My place. I only need a day or two." She looks up at Rita, scurrying around the kitchen with a tall jar of tea in her hands. Those have changed too; they look plump and soft. "Or a phone," she adds, biting her lips in punishment for assuming. 

She doesn't know who she'll call. Not Bruce. The thought makes her retch. No fucking favours, that was rule number one when they first started, and when she found out he also happened to be obscenely rich, she made sure to reiterate. 

"You can stay as long as you want." Rita's gaze drops. "That one okay?"

Selina realises she's talking about Tabby, still crushed in her arms, and lets him down. He thumps to the floor and stays there.

"Oh, Lord, your neck," Rita gasps. "I'll be right back." 

She shuffles upstairs for the first aid kit. Selina inhales slowly.

Fat Rita is easily up there with the strangest things she's seen in her life, and that's saying something. When they met - Selina at thirteen, Rita at seventeen - Rita had been not only starving, but starving herself, which was why Padre pitied her and Selina didn't.

Padre was in the kitchen day and night, trying to get Rita to eat whenever he saw her; once, he gave Selina a muffin and said, go share it with her. Selina told him it'd be a waste because the stupid girl would puke it up anyway. Padre smacked her over the head. Not hard, just the laser-fast motion of it, he light impact of his palm. The way people scolded little boys. Maybe he thought Selina was a boy, with the crooked short haircut and baggy clothes, but anyway, Selina took the muffin over to Rita and asked if she wanted half. And Rita, luckily, is one if those people who are so kind that their kindness binds them almost beyond their will; she said thank you, and didn't throw up. They remained friends for a long time after that.

Fat Rita is something of a miracle, if you look at it right.

"Whew," Rita exclaims, pounding her way down the stairs with the kit in hand, "Here we are."

She sits down next to Selina by the kitchen table and gets to work cleaning the scrapes. This is where it surfaces; mom-cardigan or not, she knows how to do this fast and efficient, even if she needs glasses for it. 

"Thank you," Selina says as she's working. 

"Oh, it's okay." Rita smiles briefly, but doesn't stop or look away. "This the only place you hurt?"

"Yes."

"Good." Rita clicks her tongue. "A week in town and already in trouble. I should've guessed you'd be coming by, made those cookies."

"I'm pretty sure trouble followed me."

Rita does look up at that.

"And it could follow me here," Selina adds out of obligation. "I can go. I will go. As soon as I can."

"Where, though?"

"There's one more place," she closes her eyes for a difficult second.

"You mean your ex," Rita raises her eyebrows, and holds her pointer fingers up on either side of her head.

Selina doesn't roll her eyes.

"We didn't... we don't break up like other people do," she says. "We're never together like other people are." 

"I can imagine it's quite a situation," Rita pats her hand. "Well, you can stay here as long as you want to, honey."

"You live alone, right?"

"With my fiancée," Rita's face splits into a smile, "He's a writer---well, a reporter now, in Metropolis, he comes home late. But he'll understand. I promise."

"Fiancée? When did that happen?" Selina asks, budding excitement pushing at her worries until they float. She listens, laughing a little by the end. She'd forgotten how nice it is to hear about a meetcute, something minor and incidental that leads to love. 

She thinks back to her own. Claws to his face, a hiss of pain and a punch that rattled her bones. It's not really a nice story, them beating the shit out of each other in a contemporary art gallery. 

*

"This is Gary," Rita says when he comes home, proudly presenting a lanky, awkwardly-shaped man in a v-neck sweater and fogged-up wet glasses. He looks like he brings his entire office coffee and favours messenger bags over briefcases. He looks---sweet. "Gary, this is the friend I told you about. Selina. She didn't have a change of clothes, so I gave her yours."

The plain grey sweatshirt and wifebeater underneath fit better than Rita's would've, at least. Selina doesn't really care whose they are as long as they're clean.

"No, of course," Gary holds out a hand. "Hi. Nice to meet you."

"You too," Selina shakes it. "Sorry to barge in like this."

"Helluva grip," Gary laughs.

"Honey," Rita chews her lips, hands closing gently on the guy's arm as she guides him over to the sofa. "Here."

They sit down, Selina across from them. There's a coffee table. For just a moment, she glances at her reflection in the glass. 

"Gary, Selina is..." 

"Selina Kyle," his face does something, and suddenly he doesn't seem so bland. He chuckles nervously. "Rita explained on the phone. It's okay."

Her gut twists. She wills it to shut up.

"I'll be gone as soon as I can."

"Honey," Rita smiles in that strange way where her mouth bends down instead of up. She looks fond, comforting. "Apartments don't appear out of nowhere." 

"I'll figure something out." She runs a hand over her face. "Gary, can I ask you something?"

He sits back and clasps his hands together. "Sure."

"Is the signal on?" 

"Huh? Yeah, it's on," He blinks. His mouth pops open, though he quickly covers it with his hand. "Oh. Right, him. Bad news for you, right," he chuckles again. "He won't... bust in here, or anything, right? It's not like..." he cuts himself off, because she definitely is bad enough to be in the Bat's crosshairs, and he's only now realising it. 

"You don't have anything to worry about," she says, deadpan, ignoring Rita's stifled smile.

Gary smiles as well, clearly on instinct and not because he has any clue what's going on. He seems like a nice guy. Awkward, but nice.

The clock in the living room declares almost an hour past midnight. The room is dark. 

"I didn't realise how late it was," Rita drops a hand on her chest. "Selina, you must be exhausted. I'll get you some blankets and---"

Selina's not exhausted; she wants to shout. What she wouldn't give to feel fucking safe again, to sleep in the warmth of a true home. She feels like a parasite, stealing peace and comfort that aren't hers. That she doesn't deserve. 

She realises she should've slept on a fucking bus stop.

She shakes herself out of the pain, and looks up at Rita. She's staring at her phone, which is vibrating in her hand. 

"Little late for that," Gary remarks quietly.

They all stare together. Outside, it's pouring. Rita picks up and doesn't say anything.

"No, she's not here," she answers after a moment. She waits. Selina's already getting up to run, heart in her throat, but Rita's hand on hers stops her. She mouths, wait. "Well, then you've got it wrong, don't you? She's not here. I haven't seen her since we were little kids, and I want nothing to do with her."

Gary picks up his phone, then puts it down. Probably thinking about the police, and she wants to laugh. Gary; oh, Gary.

"I don't care, I haven't seen her! Can't help you!" Rita scoffs and hangs up. 

Selina sighs. "You should've let me listen."

"Oh, honey, you know we never take that chance," Rita looks down at her hands, limp in her lap. "If they think anything is off, they might come check---"

She's right, but some absurd part of Selina wants to imagine things. Continue imagining things. Fuck.

It doesn't sound like much when it happens. A movement of air, the faint click of a hatch. But Selina has not lived this long by sitting and waiting, and for the second time in the past minute she's out of her seat---she crosses the living room in quick, silent paces, pushing up the sleeves of her sweatshirt. Her claws are somewhere on the floor in the hallway, she'll have to do without them; she grabs a knife from the kitchen instead.

Rita and Gary are frozen together on the couch. 

The floor whines softly, soft enough to miss under the whisper of rain. Something shifts by the door to the backyard and she presses herself to the fold of the corner, waiting. Going on hearing alone, it's near impossible to gauge the distance of someone moving so damn quietly, but then there's motion---and she lunges, straight into a perfectly executed counter.

She's thrown to the floor, her back meeting the linoleum with a thunk, but she takes the intruder down with her. They tumble, splashing water everywhere; Selina doesn't quite know how it happens, why it's so easy - but she still has the knife in her fist, and she's about to use it when a gauntleted hand pins her wrist to the floor.

"Selina!"

She realises that most of her vision has filled with grey. The silver clouds shift and clear as she goes still. There's sweat on her face, a lot of it, she can feel it in her hair.

She only got this far because he allowed it. She knows that. He's the better fighter. It's fine. He was in control. The knife clatters on the ground.

"God," she manages to say in a reasonably level voice, "You scared me."

He gets off her. "Holy shit," Gary is saying, "Holy m..."

Bruce doesn't look at him. He gives Selina a hand up, which she takes with gratitude. She's still dizzy. She wipes her face with her sleeve.

"You're here," Gary is still talking. "He's here. Rita..."

"Sorry for hanging up on you," Rita shrugs, clearly in a better mental place than her catatonic fiancée.

"You were very convincing, Miss Ramirez," Bruce growls. "I need a moment with Miss Kyle."

Selina rolls her eyes.

"Yeah," Rita almost cracks up, but manages to find the attitude to raise an eyebrow and look him over. "You talk to 'Miss Kyle', and we'll..." She finds Gary's arm without looking and drags him to the kitchen.

*

It's been a weird day for Gary Wisely.

First, a new barista messed up his Chai Latte at his go-to coffee shop. Gary isn't the kind of guy to get mad at someone for making a mistake, but he does enjoy starting the day with a lovely Chai, and the tasteless sugary milk in his cup is definitely not that. He drinks it anyway, of course, because it's sugar, and Gary needs sugar, because he stresses out very easily. He imagines the poor barista rushing between orders and gets stressed out for him, too. 

Second, he got to work late and got a disapproving look from one of his co-workers. Gary's a good reporter and he pulls his weight, and that would sound suspiciously like a compliment if it wasn't also directed at himself - and Gary is more likely to swallow his own tongue than to ever, ever compliment himself. More than that, he renders other people's compliments useless; his name spoils them, ruins them, makes them bare acknowledgements of his mediocrity. That disapproving look might be water off a duck's back to anyone else, but to Gary, already trapped under two thousand metric tons of self-hatred, it's decimating. Gary hasn't had a proper story in weeks. Gary's going to lose his job. Gary's going to be the fucking family failure all over again.

Third, he saw a bird. Or maybe it was a plane? Weird, one way or another. 

Fourth, Selina Kyle showed up at his home, on the run from some unnamed quote-unquote "very dangerous people", and also the police, and also the Gotham Bat, whose very existence was in doubt until right now. 

Now, she's arguing with him in Gary's living room.

"Should we do something?" he asks numbly, without looking away.

"They're fine," Rita waves a hand.

"Are you telling me," Gary looks down at her, and doesn't finish.

She's suddenly very interested in a rogue crease on her cardigan.

"You knew?" he jabs at their guests with his hand in the air. 

Rita looks in their direction, then back at him. "Baby, it's not my business to talk about."

"Christ!" Selina snaps, drawing their attention.

"Think about it," the modulated growl responds. Then he adds something else, very quietly.

Selina bows her head, resigned or thoughtful. Difficult to say.

"Fuck," Gary drawls.

"Shush," Rita elbows him in the ribs. "Stop it, alright?"

"But---"

"Leave it," she pleads, low. "Just leave it."

But Gary is a good reporter, and he pulls his weight. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading, shrug emoji, heart emoji.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey hope you had a nice day today. I'm tired beyond coherent thought so forgive any errors I might've missed, and enjoy the extra long chapter in case there's a delay with the next one. c:

"I'm here."

He says it tersely, like yes, sir. Like there could be no alternative.

She doesn't quite know how to take a promise like that. It doesn't sound like a sacrifice or understanding; he might've as well been reassuring her of his actual physical existence. I'm here, he said. You sure are, she'd reply, laughing.

"I know you won't stay out of this," she says instead. "But I'm asking you to, anyway."

"You could've died."

"That sounds like a me problem."

His mouth is thin.

"Let me help."

"No," Selina exhales sharply. "Stop following me around like a sick puppy."

Bruce goes quiet. She briefly wonders if she fucked it up for real this time. She knows that's the point, but somehow---

"I'll be looking into this with or without your consent," he says stiffly. 

"Of course you will." 

She thinks he might say something else, but he just looks at her then, all grim fatherly disapproval. She hates it when he does that.

"What?" she snaps.

"You said you were willing to risk more this time," he leans in. "But the second you get scared, I'm dead weight." 

"I won't owe you for this, too," she prods him in the chest and almost breaks her finger on the armour.

"Selina," he tilts his head to the side, "There are no debts here."

Her breath hitches. No. The world is built on debt. There is no life without debt, no relationship, nothing that can't be bought or paid back for---and she gets a glimpse of what he means, then, she imagines a world where that's not the case---and it frightens her. A world where certain things can't be bargained for. Where partnership is not an equation. She wrestles her throat under control. 

She wants to snap something, bite him with a well-aimed word. She browses her cards, but then she hears the creak of a floorboard behind her, and remembers Rita and Gary; the way she's invading their home, the fact they're not equipped to handle Selina's enemies.

The loss/gain ratio is always tallying in the back of her mind, whether she wants it there or not. It's a constant clatter of beads, the tip of the scales. 

"I need a place to stay," she says. I'll find a way to make this up to you, she bites down on.

He nods curtly. "Meet me on the roof when you're ready."

Selina turns to Rita, knowing he's already gone. She takes her hands in her own.

"Thank you."

"You're still welcome here," Rita promises. She looks worried. "You don't have to go with him."

"I know." Selina squeezes her hands. "But I should." She gives Gary a look. "Nice meeting you, Gary."

"Shucks. Too bad it's not under better circumstances. Come by for dinner sometime." He points at the window. "Bring your boyfriend."

"Gary!" Rita whispers.

"I'll give you back your clothes 'soon as I can," she throws over her shoulder.

Then she scoops Tabby up from the floor and leaves. Bruce is on the roof, perched on a ridge next to the chimney, and he leads her wordlessly two streets down until they're in a side alley, where the car is waiting.

She climbs in with her cat in her arms and does her seatbelt (a lesson learned the hard way), something about the seat or the displays or maybe just Bruce beside her setting her completely at ease.

*

The screens run with rain. Selina has passed out cold against the side of the Batmobile, legs curled up to her chest and chin tilted down into her neck. Her skin is creasing around her jaw and her mouth is half-open. Bruce finds himself watching her.

He returns his gaze to the displays. The streets are empty at this hour, strings of lights passing overhead. They remind him of something. Christmas.

"Where are we going?" Selina asks, voice hoarse. She rubs at her face. She's wearing a men's sweatshirt over her costume. Her wrists look tiny poking out of the rolled-up sleeves.

"Financial district." 

"Why?"

Bruce glances at her. "I have a penthouse there. I thought you'd rather have your own space."

She looks bleak.

"Bruce," her nails go one-two-three on her knees. "Maybe not tonight."

He looks at the road again. He tries not to grip the wheel too obviously. "And you called me a sick puppy."

Selina's feet slide from the seat and into the bottom of the car, scaring the cat who'd curled up there. He jumps over the gap and into Bruce's lap. "My fucking apartment just burned down," she says, voice trembling, "Along with all my shit, and probably one or two of my cats, so excuse me if I'm a little fucking agitated!"

She screams the last part, and he has to blink, though his eyes are still on the road. 

Now that he thinks on it, she was surprisingly put-together at Rita's. Or perhaps not surprisingly; Selina's an actress, a born performer, but even she can only take so much.

"You're right," he adjusts his hold on the wheel, "I'm sorry."

"No, I'm sorry," she echoes, staring at the dashboard. Stripes of orange light pass over her face. "I lashed out. Again." She breathes. "The truth is that I'm scared, Bruce. And when I'm scared, I feel like people close to me are just going go drag me down. Or like I'm going to drag them down with me." 

He doesn't move a muscle, careful not to betray a thing. His chest tightens, but it's not the crushing sensation from before; the pull gives quickly.

He growls obscenities in his thoughts. Not this again.

"I don't want you to go after the people who did this, especially not when you bonked your head on a brick wall last week," she goes on, wiping the underside of her nose with her sleeve. "I just want to feel safe for one fucking second."

Bruce considers this.

She's a hedonist. An egoistic manipulator with a favour for short term gratification. 

"Why are you turning around?" she asks, alarmed.

"I have to get back to work. If you want me nearby, you'll have to stay at the manor tonight," he speeds down the widening streets. "That's the best I can offer." 

She nods. He knew she would. For tonight, they can pretend.

*

She wakes bleary-eyed and sluggish. 

A glance at the out-of-place sleek black clock on the bedside table reveals that it's eight in the morning; she pouts at it and pulls the heavy, cold covers up to her nose. They smell fresh. She chokes on nothing and curls up again, closing her eyes.

A lot of people have commented on her ability not just to fall asleep anywhere, anytime, but to go back to sleep regardless of the amount of rest she's had. She gained this talent around fifteen and has kept it since; she is not bound by any kind of sleep cycle or biological clock. 

She sinks, and resurfaces again around noon. Again, she falls asleep, without any decision on her part this time.

When she wakes for the third time, the door to the bedroom is just now opening. Bruce enters, having swapped the suit for a black turtleneck and pants that he would argue are graphite. They're black.

Selina sits up, holding the covers to her body like a barrier, but she moves her legs so he can sit. He does.

"How are you?" he asks, low.

She rubs at her face. There's black on her fingers when she lowers her hand, mascara from the night before. Fuck, she must look like a shitshow. 

But Bruce is just looking at her, waiting. If there's makeup smeared everywhere, he's graciously ignoring it, the full intensity of his sharp blue eyes focused on her.

It's like using a magnifying glass to start a fire; scattered light coming through it is harmless, but angle it just right, at the right distance, and the bright white point will start to smoke. That's where she is. Burning.

"I feel like shit," she says, dragging a hand through her hair, probably giving herself more of an electrocuted look. She doesn't look at the clock.

"Get out of bed," Bruce gestures her up and stands.

A surge of irrational anger runs through her, from the tip of her head to her toes, but this is his home. She gets up. The floor is cold.

"What's wrong?" he asks.

If he wants sexy, silky-voiced Selina, then he caught her at a very, very bad time.

"Several things, all of which you know about," she mutters. "Pick one."

"Do I?" he leans in, and she doesn't look away.

"Yes."

He gauges her for a few long moments. He always sighs through his nose. 

"There's food in the kitchen," he says finally, turning for the door. "I'll be in the cave."

"Bruce," she stops him. A flash of surprise flickers through his eyes, though it doesn't show anywhere else on his face. "Do you have anything I could wear?" 

It disappears.

"You left some clothes," he says, "They're in that cabinet."

"Ah." She musters the strength for a smile. "Thanks."

They go their own separate ways, Bruce to the cave and Selina to the hunt. She finds a piece of homemade cake set aside for her in the fridge, which she greedily consumes with a glass of milk since no-one is around to judge. Just when she's about done, Tabby comes meowing by, and she feels a stab of guilt in her gut at not having any food for him; since Alfred is clearly out, maybe he can get some.

She walks down to the cave, feeling a faint sense of déjà vu because of the clothes - a loose velvety blouse with a low neckline and elegant black trousers, an outfit she actually remembers from one of her evenings as Bruce Wayne's arm candy. There is nothing in the world that beats working a case with the single sharpest man she knows while he consistently plays the part of a complete idiot. It's the funniest fucking thing, sometimes, when he's not suffering his way through it; when he finds that spark that makes Brucie Wayne, billionaire playboy believable in the first place.

"Can I borrow your phone?" she pokes her head inside, "Tabby doesn't have anything to eat."

"Alfred knows," Bruce calls back without looking away from the computer. 

"Oh. What are you working on?" She trots downstairs, skipping steps, and passes a tall glass column on her way.

She stops. 

There is a uniform on display inside. It looks like an updated version of the Robin suit, only bigger, bulkier. Someone's frantic hand spray-painted mocking words across the chest.

She leans a little closer, then jerks away with a sharp intake if air. She wasn't wrong. There's blood on it.

"Bruce," she says, feeling his gaze on her back, "What is this?"

She whips around, trying to keep herself under control through the cold flashes swarming in the back of her skull. There's bound to be something, some explanation other than the obvious---but if there is one, Bruce appears unwilling to provide it. 

He's just looking at her. Equal parts fear and anger rush through her veins.

"Bruce," she manages through a tight throat, "Where's Dick?"

It's a coward's way of asking, she knows.

He covers his eyes with his hand, and for a second, everything goes slow and razor-sharp around her. Like the moment when the knife sinks in, before the pain hits - like the spin in your head when you get up after drinking for a while, and find that your legs don't work.

"He's fine," Bruce says, holding his temples in a white-knuckled vice. His eyes reappear, but nothing can be read in them. "He's in Blüdhaven. Police Academy."

The weight subsides, if only slightly, and Selina breathes easier in the space between his answer and her next question.

When she can form words again, she points at the uniform without looking.

"Then what the fuck is this?"

Bruce's eyes are fiercely guarded.

He turns in his chair and throws something over his shoulder. Selina catches it instinctively and smooths her thumb over the screen.

"Phone," he barks. "Keep it."

"Wait," she says to the back of his head, walking closer with the device clutched in her hand. "Tell me what---"

"No."

"Bruce, look at me."

"I am trying to work."

"Why are you shutting me out?"

"Because it's none of your business!" he shouts. Selina's shoulders jolt. 

He's breathing hard, having turned just enough for her to see the side of his face twisted in a grimace. She's shaking. 

"Don't raise your voice at me," she says, almost cracking the glass screen of phone in her fist. 

"Go," he replies, to his credit quite calmly. Selina turns on her heel and leaves.

*

"I couldn't be sure which brand your friend preferred, so I simply purchased what the clerk recommended," Alfred is saying, tipping a can into a small bowl and scooping out the contents with a silver fork.

It's top-shelf stuff. Selina spends more on food for the cats than she does on herself, but what Alfred got is still well out of her price range. She slumps against the counter with her cheek on her knuckles.

"Thanks, Alfred," she says, muffled. She doesn't know where she'll go, once she finally musters the strength.

Tabby leaps up onto the counter from the tiled floor and stuffs his nose in the wet food. He'd win kitty Olympics if food were on the line.

"Ah," the butler raises his hands, taking a small step away from the feasting cat, "Perfect, then."

"He doesn't bite," Selina slurrs.

Alfred raises an eyebrow. "But he does scratch, does he not?" and he indicates his jaw, mirroring where Selina still feels the sting of claws.

"He was scared," she says. "It wasn't his fault."

"It seemed to me, Miss Kyle, that you are not one to make excuses for others."

She hauls herself up on her elbows to look at him head-on, though she's still partially draped over the countertop. "It's a cat, Alfred," she says flatly. "Not a person. He gets scared, he scratches."

"Is that not true for people as well?"

She opens her mouth, frowns. Smiles quick and very false to let him know, point taken.

"Well," he places a few more bags on the table, and Selina recognises the labels. Clothes. She lets her eyes go wide. "In any case, these are for you."

"You didn't have to," she says, alarmed.

Alfred gives her a look bordering on sympathetic. "Miss Kyle, it's the least we can do. You lost everything." He looks at Tabby, still obliviously enjoying his meal on the counter. "This one is very lucky to have you."

Lost everything. He's probably thinking about the fire, trying to imagine it. Maybe he's picturing Selina heroically grabbing her cat and leaping out a window at the very last minute.

He doesn't know she just watched it burn.

*

The wine bottle is what finally convinces her she owes Bruce an apology. She rolls her eyes at herself and sips the last tiny bit of liquid from the bottom of the glass, tasting the burn on her tongue.

She sobs a little, leaning to the side, just a small stifled noise. She could cry. This could turn into a full-on mental breakdown, but she feels removed somehow, bound. There's something holding her together that she didn't put there, or at least doesn't remember putting there - old and resilient, rooted deep.

She pulls herself together and gets up. The glass clinks on the counter.

It's cold in the cave, but then it always is. She descends the steps slowly, one at a time, piecing together the words. She has the gist of it. Bullet points.

Bruce is standing in front of the case, his hands clasped behind his back. He looks at her when she approaches, but after a moment returns his attention to the uniform - and even with his face completely still, his eyes are never dull. 

"Bruce," she stops at the foot of the stairs, a few steps away from him. "I'm sorry."

He doesn't say anything, but the razor-sharp gaze loses focus. He's listening.

"I don't---I don't think I know how to talk to people anymore," she licks her lips. "If you reconsider, it will not happen again."

"Reconsider what?"

She blinks. "You told me to go." She tilts her head to the side, staring at the depths of the cave stretching below.

Bruce sighs through his nose, lowering his head almost in shame. His shoulders tense when his grip on his own hands tightens, then releases.

"I didn't mean," he begins, then clenches his jaw. "I wasn't asking you to leave the manor."

She processes that. "Oh."

"You thought I'd just throw you out on the street?" he asks sharply, his undivided attention doing strange things to her chest. 

"What the hell was I supposed to think?" she hears the frantic edge to her voice, but can't help it.

"Selina," he begins, but stops. His throat works, his lowered eyelids gleam under the lights. "Jesus."

It's almost whispered, soft and pained. She's already walking closer.

"I'm still sorry," she says, tone abrupt, and stands on her toes to near their faces. "With or without the threat of homelessness."

He doesn't like the joke.

"Thank you for everything," she says, a little dejected, running her hand down his arm as she steps away.

He acknowledges her with a grunt, then walks back to his desk and inputs a password; a clear communication of, I'm busy. She clenches her teeth and her fists and stands there, cursing herself, before striding out of the cave and back into the manor.

*

The knock on Gordon's door takes him by surprise.

"In," he calls from over the introductory forensics report. The fire in Park Row completely consumed what they were still confirming as Kyle's apartment; the landlady was a senile raisin-faced woman, bent like a shrimp and about as quick-witted. She was convinced the apartment belonged to her niece, Daya, who was getting married in June. 

The fire was eventually put out by locals; firemen didn't even get there until hours later. It's the area, someone said. Makes folks nervous. Jim wonders if some people hear themselves when they talk.

"Sir, it's for you," the officer points a thumb at the ceiling.

"Again?" 

He heaves himself out of his chair with a creak and takes his coat off the hook by the door. A gust of wind hits him in the face when he steps out onto the roof. 

"Selina Kyle's apartment burned down two days ago," the Bat says in lieu of a greeting, just an outline carved in the orange light coming from below. The wind is tugging at the angles of him, stretching the blackness out and wringing it where he's perched on the outer handrail.

"I'm aware," Gordon flips out a smoke and places in between his lips. "You don't have a light, do you?"

The dark figure watches him for a moment. "...No."

Jim tucks the cigarette back in the box and frowns. 

"The temperature suggests an explosion," the Bat goes on. "With several points of origin. This was an attempt on her life."

"I'm not sure that's the case."

"Are you suggesting she blew up her own apartment?"

"I don't know. I said I wasn't sure."

The shape moves. "She didn't."

They stare each other down.

"It would help if we could actually get a hold of her," Jim remarks, hoping to break the stalemate.

The Bat remains silent. It's a guilty silence.

There's a dampened thump and a hiss, and something lands softly on the ventilation shaft nearby. The figure vaults over it and climbs up, settling over the door downstairs like a gargoyle.

"Are you boys gossiping about me?" her sultry voice asks.

"Kyle," Jim sighs. 

The Bat glares at her. Kyle drops down into a crouch before straightening up and folding her arms on her chest. 

"Do you know who rigged your apartment, Miss Kyle?" Gordon asks, raising his voice over the howl of the wind.

She's wearing a different set of goggles than before, darker ones; he can't make out her eyes. She saunters closer to the Bat.

"I have a lot of enemies," she says. 

"And your last apartment?" her companion growls, "Was that the same enemy?"

The smile is wiped clean off her face. Jim looks between them, warily accepting there might be a case to be made after all---but he won't learn anything if they go for each other's throats now.

"What last apartment?" he asks, drawing their attention.

Kyle's head immediately turns back to the Bat, the set of her lips a firm line.

"The police are already involved," he tells her, modulated voice low. "If you have information---"

She makes an annoyed sound in her nose. "Can we talk about this at home?" she snaps. 

There's a sudden and very deep silence. 

Kyle makes a motion with her hand, like she wants to raise it to her mouth, but stops herself halfway. The Bat is deathly still.

Jim shakes his head and tucks his hands in his pockets, watching the street below. His working relationship with Gotham's urban legend is based on extreme dehumanization - he doesn't think about the Bat in terms of his civilian identity, his home, his family, at all. The feeling on his tongue is difficult to describe.

"Miss Kyle is in my custody," the Bat's voice is quiet. 

"And you'd prefer that I not share that tidbit with my colleagues," Jim drawls. "Yes. I know. It's not the first time I've lied for you."

"Comissioner," the Cat calls, sharp. "Don't investigate the fires. All you'll be doing is wasting resources."

"You know who's after you," Gordon presses. "Don't you want them to stop?"

She exhales, long and thoughtful. 

"Do you even know what you're wanted for?" he opens his arms. "Misdemeanors. You are the cat burglar Al Capone. Your help in bringing down someone bigger could---"

"I'm not saying shit," she backs away, her voice silky. 

"We're done here," the Bat gives her a level stare and nods at Gordon. 

Something tells Jim they aren't done with this case, but trying to talk about it with Kyle present will only lead to more married-old-couple bickering - and Gordon's not in the mood to listen to that. 

He watches them zip away, two fluctuating shapes in the dark. The further away they get, the more they seem to blend together.

*

The drive home is thick with loaded silence.

Bruce relies on autopilot more than usual, the now-familiar thrum of a migraine beating his pulse out on the inside of his skull. Pressure is building in his forehead and nose. He feels like a fucking steam cooker.

Selina is wisely quiet. She probably thinks he's angry, and he realistically could be, were he not so intensely focused on staying awake. Right now, all he can do is count backwards from a hundred in German and hope for the best. 

The car doesn't have a passenger seat - instead, it's got migrating controls, meaning he could ask her to take over at any moment. And maybe he is slightly angry.

They drive into the cave faster than usual, he has to hit the brakes with a screech. He gets out as soon as they've come to a full halt and just leaves her there. Sure enough, silence she can take, but not him walking away. She's never known how to just let him walk away.

He hears her boots thumping on the floor.

"Bruce!" she calls out.

He tears off the cowl and tosses it to the ground. 

"I'm sorry," she pleads, her footsteps gone. "I'm sorry, okay? I... I... I just want all of this to stop, I just want you to stop, and I don't want you to be working this case behind my back, much less with cops, okay? It's my fucking mess, and you're still hurt, you shouldn't..."

"God damn you," Bruce says. 

She goes quiet.

Then, when he dares to look over his shoulder, she's crying.

She isn't making a sound; her face is twisted in pain, tears are streaming down her reddened cheeks, but she's completely silent. Her mouth opens, but she presses a hand over it, and he hears a breath. Just a small, sharp inhale.

"Selina," he says, turning on his heel and walking towards her. She's still on the landing, by the car.

She doesn't react, frozen like that, shoulders hunched and eyes leaking. 

For too long, he just stands there. He knows the logistics, but there's a whole world of emotional intelligence to it that he simply doesn't have.

"Selina," he repeats when he remembers himself, keeping his voice calm and level. 

He realises she's not about to move of her own volition, so he drapes an arm around her shoulders and hauls her, step by step, to the workbench nearest to them. He sits her down there, holding her shoulders, and leans close.

"I'm sorry," is the first thing out of her mouth, but that doesn't help; her breathing goes from reasonably normal to quick, desperate intakes of air that don't seem to be reaching her lungs. 

He reaches for one of the manuals sitting half-open on the workbench and stuffs it in her hands. "Read."

Her eyes are closed, but she takes the tome. Her fingers are cold where they overlap his.

"Read it," he demands.

Selina opens it on the front page and stares at the text. She has to blink away some tears to get started, but she does.

"Warning," she mumbles, "Remember this manual carefully before the product in use. The product is meant for use in outdoor. The..." she trails off, but her eyes flick over the words, brow pulling into a furrow. "This is really broken English," she says weakly.

She looks up at him, puffy-faced and embarrassed. 

"Do you remember," Bruce says quietly, "The time truffles saved the day?"

She probably doesn't. He exhales.

"You stopped crying the second you started chewing." 

Selina smiles, then sobs somewhere in her throat, wiping at her face with her hand. She's still crying, but there's a kind of resigned acceptance to it, like she's simply waiting for it to be over.

"I didn't mean to interrupt our fight," she mutters. "Please, go on."

Bruce ignores the bait. "You're afraid."

Her eyes are bloodshot and red-rimmed, watching him then flicking away again at seemingly random times. There's a small patch of red just next to her left iris. 

"And you're hurt," she pleads. "You shouldn't be working."

He lets his head fall. "I can go hunt down witnesses and interrogate suspects. Get in a fight or two. Or you could just tell me."

"Why are you so obsessed with this?"

He has to clench his jaw to relieve some of the pressure. "Someone is trying to kill you. You want me to stand by and watch?"

"Just---" she reaches forward and curls her hands into the cape, tugging him closer.

"Stop running," he commands, unmoving. "You're safe."

Her head stays bowed to his chest for a long time. He studies the crown, where her short hair curls slightly, mussed by her costume. 

"Roman Sionis," she says, forehead resting between his collarbones. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hahah hello! Sorry for my absence, I recently got back into watching Gotham and became interested in a pairing from that show. Hint---it is, obviously, the most depressing one.  
So while I was off writing that, I got so depressed that I had to come back to the more lighthearted batcat just so I wouldn't spend all of October staring wistfully out of windows. Here you are.

Red. Blue. Red. Blue. Red. Blue---sirens.

She's looking down at the street, hidden on the fire escape in the alleyway; there's a cordon of police cruisers surrounding the place where it happened. He has never let them this close before.

The red brick wall is covered in blood, the dip leaking like a bullet wound; the asphalt below is red, too. Bruce is on his knees, cradling something. She can't see from this angle, his back blocking the view, but then his cape moves with the wind and she sees two green boots.

And she---she looks at the police cars, a wall of flashing lights surrounding them, and wonders why no-one is coming any closer. She can see officers, but they're motionless, frozen like renditions anywhere between pointing a weapon and simply staring, wide-eyed, at the scene. Some just look grim.

There is no way out of this.

Quiet as she can, Selina creeps up the metal staircase, then grapples to the broken window (the one she came in through last time, she remembers dimly; the one Bruce landed on) and looks again.

She can see Dick's face over a black shoulder. His forehead is covered in blood, the shape of it strange and unnatural. 

Something seizes her throat and she vaults the window frame, falling for a distressingly long time before she lands. She steps closer, staring at Dick's unmasked face, at his eyes - his open, empty eyes - and then she can't walk anymore.

She stumbles forward, hand grabbing Bruce's back for balance, but she misses---or maybe goes right through it---and wakes with a jolt.

"Jesus," she whispers, adrenaline singing in her veins. Every inch of her is covered in cold sweat. She sits up, breathing deeply, and buries her face in her hands.

The decision almost isn't hers. She lunges for the phone Bruce gave her and unlocks it with trembling fingers, squinting against the blinding light of the screen. She starts browsing numbers, but the nausea is growing, so she scrolls back up and types in the name. It pops up.

She presses it.

She didn't think to check the time, but when Dick picks up, he's groggy. 

"This better be fucking important," his voice, hoarse and deep almost beyond recognition, growls in her ear.

Selina opens her mouth, but nothing comes out.

"Bruce," Dick says, irritation giving way to concern. "Are you there?"

It's him. He's okay. Selina takes the phone away from her ear and ends the call with a press of her thumb.

*

He can't sleep. When he closes his eyes, the night's research flutters over his eyelids.

Nothing indicates Black Mask is even active; Sionis' operations had been limited to licking wounds and minor moves for years, almost like he'd been banished from Gotham by some unknown force. Out of character for him, but Bruce had had his hands full with other, more pressing issues.

The floorboards are cold; he walks across the master bedroom and pulls on his robe, quietly making his way out the door and down the hall. 

He can't see as well in the dark as he used to.

He hesitates in front of Selina's door; his hesitation soon turns into lingering. He's quiet and still, frozen with one hand just barely raised, and he hears his heartbeat in his ears; why would she leave? 

Where would she go?

His hand on the doorknob, his pulse thundering. He twists, putting enough pressure on the metal to stifle the click, and pushes. 

The bed is empty.

He deals with the spike of panic by staying completely motionless throughout. Then he closes the door and walks away, his mind a bumbling mess. She could just be in the bathroom---or she could be leaving Gotham this very second. 

The new goggles, like everything manufactured for Bruce's associates (including the new Nightwing suit) have a tracker in them. He can find her from the cave.

(He will not be helpless again. He will not find himself feeling his way through the dark when just a few seconds could've saved Jason's life. And it doesn't matter if Dick, or Selina, or even Alfred disapprove; he will not lose anyone else.)

As it turns out, the tracker is less than necessary. Selina is on the training mat, dressed in leggings and a black top, sitting - Bruce can't call it anything else - criss-cross applesauce, her elbows on her thighs and hands folded over her crossed ankles. She's hunched over, breathing slow. He can see the line of her spine stressing the fabric.

He turns to leave, but her voice carries through the cave.

"Can't sleep?"

He exhales. Walks, still barefoot, down the metal stairs and onto the mat.

"You were in bed for about twenty minutes. I checked the time stamp on your last file," she shakes her head, still with her back to him. "At least lay down."

"I went through everything I have on Sionis," he says, standing in front of her on the mat. "I don't think he's currently in Gotham."

Selina doesn't look up.

"Well, that's good."

"If a crime lord of his calibre is returning here, Gordon will want to know." He waits. "I have to run some simulations."

"Boring," Selina lifts her head with great effort. "Spar with me."

Bruce takes her hand and pulls her to her feet. She uses that to squeeze her fingers shut on his and aim a jab at his exposed stomach; but he's fought deprived of more than just an arm, and his free hand clamps down on her wrist and turns her, the suddenly uncomfortable angle forcing her to release him. 

He watches her pace. "You're still afraid."

"I'm not."

"I know what you look like when you're not. This is not it."

"You don't know anything, then," she snaps, keeing her distance.

Bruce grits his teeth. "You think I'll judge you?"

"I think you'll say I'm being irrational, and you'll be right," Selina puts her arms around herself. "But it's what's kept me alive all this time. So save your meditation techniques and breathing exercises. I'm good."

Something drips far inside the cave, a tiny splatter of sound in their shared stillness.

"Fine," he clenches his jaw, "If that's your preference."

"I don't have a choice."

"I say you do."

"You're not the authority here," she shakes her head in small, frantic motions. "You cause fear. You rely on it. You have no idea what it's like to be hunted for fucking sport."

There is a hundred stories he wants to tell her to disprove that, but there is an issue far more pressing. He looks her in the eye and steps closer. 

"Are you afraid of me?"

It stuns her into silence. Ironically, he feels cold in the tips of his fingers, the slow drop of his stomach; his chest constricts.

"No," Selina says like she just found her voice. "No. Of course not."

"Never?" he repeats softly.

She shrugs, slow and almost girlishly coy.

"I knew you didn't kill," she says. "And you always let me get away. In my world, you qualified as an occasional annoyance."

Bruce raises an eyebrow. "I never let you get away."

"Yes, you did," Selina makes an amused little frown. 

"I didn't."

Her eyes grow confused, then brighten. 

"Well," she says slowly, folding her arms on her chest. "That's interesting. You're not just saying that to make me feel better, are you?"

"No. Not after you revealed you thought of me as an annoyance."

"In my defense, I changed my mind pretty quickly."

He's missed that smile; the one that comes exactly from the place she based her alter ego around, slow and mischievous, but with genuine light still twinkling in her eyes. 

Then she ducks her head, and sits down on the mat. Bruce joins her without prompting.

*

There is nothing but the abyss; Bruce is vacant, like life got up and left him years ago. He looks at her, but doesn't recognise her.

And Selina wishes he'd just say something; anything, anything, even just to placate her. Bruce's hardened silence is, she learns, a wall that builds itself. He is a glass pane shattered, in place only because the pieces fit so well together. Because he is too used to his shape to be anything else.

That night, she flies. 

It's been a good run and Selina is ready to head home, her wins pleasantly heavy on her belt and her soul singing. It doesn't matter what she stole; her mind pushes it aside along with her understanding of gravity---she's not even sure she's actually holding the whip. She swings by the last of the lit windows, dangerously low, and for the first time in years she's on the verge of laughing out of pure joy---when out of the corner of her eye, she sees baseball bat.

Selina's momentum carries her to the next rooftop over, but that is where she stops, feet planted firmly on the concrete. Even here, she can hear the fight - one-sided now, for the most part - and all of a sudden she's five again, watching from her perch on the rickety bookcase. 

She imagines a child. 

She crashes through the window.

The baseball bat comes down on her, but Selina is fast, and much stronger than most assume; she grabs the bat, tears it from his grip. 

The man's face is covered in a sweaty red sheen. He's wearing a cheap rumpled dress shirt with the collar undone, a gut hanging over his belt. He's big. Selina doesn't look at the woman behind her.

She turns the bat in her hands, then brings it down sideways into the man's stomach. She thinks of him hitting the woman and she wants to kill him. She could.

She strikes again, harder, slamming the bat into his ribcage. Again. Every crunching impact is a new rush of satisfaction, it feels so good.

When he stops trying to get up, Selina drops the weapon with a thud and a roll, and turns to the woman. She wouldn't blame her if she was scared out of her mind, but she isn't - she's just watching her rescuer with big, bewildered eyes, on her knees on the carpet. There is something on the floor around her---white little beads, shiny even in the gloom, spilled like marbles. Selina realises her belt is on the ground as well, undone in the scuffle; the little beads are pearls. She's panting.

She wipes the blood from her face and steps away from them both, from the mess, towards the window, picking up the belt on the way. She doesn't say anything.

She used to tell herself she didn't understand Bruce. She still does, because who she's made herself into is so vastly different from who he is at his core; and she does know him, studied him diligently so she could look past the lies he tells the world. The more she learned, the more she saw how far from each other they are, how bound by their opposing sides; but the key difference---the oldest one---is that Bruce only truly knows how to play one part. He doesn't cross the lines he's drawn for himself.

Selina can kill someone and save a life in the span of ten minutes.

When she wakes, she's been moved to the cot by the wall, a blanket draped over her and a pillow under her head. She wonders if there will ever come a day when she will want to get out of bed.

"B?" she asks the empty cave, but he's gone.

Selina drags herself up with the blanket still around her, then hauls herself to the computer. She feels tired.

The last opened file contains photos; at first glance, they all look similar, walls and furniture covered in something black and textured. She opens the first one and her stomach drops---she recognises her sofa, her chair. It's her apartment, or rather it was, before it burned to a crisp. Forensics is done with the place, meaning Bruce must've gone to investigate. Selina swears under her breath and runs to suit up.

She takes one of the bikes, rips through the forest with the engine roaring. She doesn't know what time it is, just that it's the dead of night, and the woods are quiet and still. She takes care to stay hidden this time, goggles over her eyes feeding her information as she creeps over the rooftops. Fancy, typical Bruce. She heads to Park Row. 

Several times, she comes across the familiar red and blue of police lights. She almost panics, but this is Gotham; there's more immediate concerns than a shadow sweeping over the city. If they notice her, either they don't care or they think she's the Bat.

The round face of the signal flashes far in the distance, and then she's near Park Row, cellars shaking with music and dancing bodies. She slips in through a half-open window and drops soundlessly onto the charred floor. 

Bruce is inspecting one of the walls, a small light in one hand and some kind of sensor in the other. It's beeping at a slow, even pace.

"I didn't want you to see this," he says without looking. 

"I'm a big girl," Selina mutters, looking around.

"Forensics found traces of explosives."

"Where?"

"Everywhere." Bruce turns, light blinding her for a moment as he lowers it. "You would've noticed this amount of plastics in your apartment."

"Of course it went everywhere, it exploded," Selina crosses her arms on her chest. 

"No," he sounds grim. "They were in the walls."

She scoffs. "That's insane."

"You were gone a long time," Bruce gestures to where he'd just been using the device, "But someone knew you'd be coming back."

"Sionis may hate me, but he wouldn't go to that kind of trouble," Selina purposely doesn't look at the wall, which is clearly in tatters not caused by heat. "There are a hundred easier ways to kill me."

"And yet, this is the second time you get out of a burning apartment alive." Bruce tucks the light and sensor away, cape falling into place over his arms and flattening him into a black shape in the dark. "I need to know what you did to him."

"What I did to him?" Selina places a hand over her chest. "I'm not the one trying to---"

"Selina."

"I pissed him off," she says instead. "I stepped on his ego. But that was years ago."

"It was you," Bruce growls, slow and deep. "You made him leave Gotham."

Selina tries to keep breathing normally. "That's crazy."

Bruce gestures around the blackened floors. "Roman Sionis burned his family home to the ground." Then, quietly. "Fire has meaning to him."

She inhales loudly, uncaring now, desperate to keep steady. Conscious. "What do you want me to tell you? So he wants me dead. He wants a lot of people dead."

"You said it yourself, there are a hundred easier ways to kill you." He turns his face away sharply, mouth pursed. "I won't play this game."

Selina steps closer. "What game?!"

"The one where you pretend things aren't as bad as they are, and expect the world to go along with it."

Selina feels her face heating up. Her vision blurs, but she forces it back.

"You can't run anymore," he adds, staring her down.

"You watch me," she snaps and turns on her heel, her entire body trembling. She'll get the money, she'll get tickets, she'll get out of here. As if Bruce fucking Wayne knows a thing about her. As if Bruce Wayne gets to tell her what she can or can't do. She will make it. She always does.

A hand closes on her elbow, but she rips it free, careless of the bruises it will leave. Bruce reaches out again and she evades, raising her forearms to her chest. She finds her goggles steaming up.

"He is torturing you," Bruce growls. "Do you understand that? His people were here, they made sure even a thorough search would yield nothing. He wanted to terrify you in the one place you felt safe."

"Joke's on him," she huffs, "I don't feel safe anywhere."

"Selina," he presses, "This has to stop."

"Do what you want, I'm out of here," she says, already headed for the window.

"Selina," he exhales. "They didn't find any animal bones. Your cats are okay."

She nods, wiping at her face.

*

The truth, he thinks, is much worse than he imagined. 

Selina is beyond terrified, and she's been that way for so long she doesn't know how to be anything else. She is razor-sharp, but only at the cost of never being off her guard; she is fast, but only because she never keeps still.

The peace she needs, he finds hard to give. He wants to work, to deal with the problem methodically and lose himself in the familiar patterns until his mind is clear. Selina is acting like a cornered animal, in a constant state of fight-or-flight.

"I am happy to relay that Miss Kyle has returned for the night," Alfred's voice buzzes in his ear. "Will you be following her example, sir?"

"Not yet," he replies from his perch on the ventilation unit. 

"I should mention, Master Dick called."

Bruce keeps his eyes on the alleyway. There's an unmarked metal door and a lamp above it, and an overflowing dumpster several feet away.

"He had received a call from one of your cell phones," Alfred continues unprompted, "And was wondering if everything was alright."

He glances at the dead end, then at where the alley connects to the street. "Must have been a mistake."

"Yes, well, I allowed myself to check," Alfred's voice bears a warning undertone. "The call came from the phone currently in Miss Kyle's possession."

Bruce swears, soundlessly, his head tilted down. "I told her Dick was fine."

"It would seem she did not believe you." 

"Very observant," he says, tired.

"Have you considered why?"

"Because she's scared out of her mind. She's not thinking straight." He adjusts his crouch to keep his leg from cramping. "I'm trying not to take it personally."

"Perhaps you should take it personally, Master Bruce," Alfred snaps, rightly annoyed now. "She disbelieves your word because she can sense---"

"Enough," he says, too sharply.

The radio goes silent as the metal door below swings open on squeaky hinges. Bruce is going to answer for his tone once he gets back, but right now the mission comes first.

A man emerges from the dark---head shaved, strong build. He closes the door behind him and steps aside, watching the street for a few moments before flipping out a cigarette and lighting it with complete disinterest. He looks like he's settling in.

"Same time," Bruce mutters, too low for the modulator to pick up. "Same lackey?"

There's some distant typing, a click of a mouse. "No, the other one had hair." A pause. "Care to share your plan, Master Bruce?"

"It's a promising lead, but questioning the lookout would give away our involvement," Bruce sinks back into the black of the rooftop, away from the ledge. "I have to be sure it's Sionis."

"If it is, he is surely wondering where Miss Kyle has gone," Alfred supplies. 

Bruce grits his teeth. "He knew she'd come to Gotham, it was the only place she had left. But what now?"

Alfred lets out a ghost of a chuckle. "He may have shot himself in the foot."

"No." Bruce starts moving south, back to the car. "He knows she has to stay here, she doesn't have anywhere else to go. He's establishing the hunting grounds."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for putting up with my irregular posting and betrayal-by-other-ship. I truly love hearing your thoughts and I appreciate all the kind words you left me while I was away. :)


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so: big, big writer's block when it comes to this fic. It's times like these I appreciate every comment I've gotten as well as kudos and bookmarks and all that.  
I'm writing 2 other stories right now, and for a different pairing, tho still Batman-adjacent so??? I don't know.  
Warning for some drastic canon divergence on top of the minor differences I casually put in. in this story, Jason is buried somewhere else than he is in canon.

The phone's blue light is near-blinding in the dark of her bedroom. Selina squints, adjusting the brightness, and opens a browser. She can hear the rain in this silence.

She takes a breath. This should not feel like such a trespass, but telling Alfred goodnight in the cave and leaving him at the computers under guise of going to bed made her into a disobedient child. She chews her lip.

Whatever happened, it was bad enough for Bruce to clam up every time she tries to talk about it. Maybe this is how she helps him.

(Soothing her own mind in the process.)

She types in "Gotham Bat" and thumbs through the news page, but that of course is fruitless. Mentions and sightings roll under her gaze, all trivial and nondescript, the few available photos nothing more than a black smear in grainy footage. Most people still doubt his existence, even with the fucking signal shining into the sky from the GCPD rooftop.

She tries "Gotham Bat Robin". Robin sightings were even fewer than the Bat's, but the police quickly became aware of his existence and it leaked, like everything does in Gotham. 

She pulls in a breath and closes her eyes for a while. Thirty thousand articles screaming IS ROBIN DEAD?, in bold black letters, all with completely different dates. 

She tosses the phone form hand to hand until it locks, slowly realising she might be going about this all wrong.

She types in "Bruce Wayne" and sorts the news. The first line she reads makes her head spin.

Bruce Wayne buries fifteen year old ward.

She clutches the phone tightly in her hand.

Feeling the blood drain from her face, she slides off the bed and walks to the window. It opens easily, without a sound, and doesn't creak under her weight when she climbs up onto the windowsill. The rain wets her toes.

The way down is easy between the ledges and ivy, and she doesn't slip even once. She walks over the tiny sharp stones until they turn into grass and her hair sticks to her scalp under the pouring rain. She knows the way.

The first two gravestones, she almost doesn't see, her entire attention focused on the new one. She stops in front of it. She wonders why the fuck it took her so long to just come and check. 

Whoever Jason Peter Todd was---she feels she owes him an apology. 

Bruce, too. She doesn't know where she'll begin apologising to Bruce. Being sorry in front of gravestones is by far easier than actually answering for one's mistakes.

*

Selina shivers and walks back to the Manor, holding herself tightly with both arms. She goes down to the cave instead of her bedroom, only to find Alfred still at the computer.

"He's still out there?" she asks, voice hoarse.

"Ah, Miss Kyle." He gets up. "Would you take over for a minute?"

"Sure," she does a slow double take as he walks over to the workbench. There's a half-assembled grapple on it. She stifles a sneeze and takes his seat. "Um, side project?"

"Can't hurt to be safe," Alfred mutters as he rolls up his sleeves. "If there's something wrong with the damn thing---" His words turn into senseless grumbling as he gets to work.

Selina picks up the abandoned headset and looks at the displays. The frontal camera is showing a familiar street - a wide stretch of asphalt, a sidewalk, a narrow path up the small steps to the door. She zooms in. The number on it is familiar.

"Bats, what are you doing back at Rita's?" she asks cautiously.

"Setting up eyes." His voice is unnervingly loud in her ear. She frowns and quickly adjusts the volume. Alfred must be going deaf. "Just in case. You should be sleeping."

"Uh-uh," she mumbles, but all she can think about is how selfish she was not to check sooner. God damn it. "Did you find Sionis?"

"Don't know." The mic crackles, maybe with wind. "I'll tell you what I have in the morning."

"Planning on coming home any time soon?" she glances at Alfred's back, hunched over his work. "Sun's coming up in half an hour."

He acknowledges and goes quiet for a while, leaving Selina turning idly from side to side on the revolving chair. She flips back through some feeds - Rita's house, some trashy back streets, GCPD from a distance - and settles on the last one, an odd shot that barely shows anything except the mouth of alleyway and---

And a hole in the brick wall.

Selina zooms in, then back out. No doubt, it's where he fell. 

"Alfred," she says without looking at him, "Do you really think it was the grapple?"

A silence falls in the cave, sudden and deep. It's so quiet she can hear him breathing, a long, calming intake.

"No."

"Then why?" She stares at the alleyway. "Why there? Twice, Alfred."

She turns to look, but he's still bent over the workbench. 

"I wouldn't know, Miss K."

"You realise I'm trying to help, right?" She spins around in the chair, tightly wrapping a fist around the microphone. "I know that there are things you both don't want me to know, but is this really one of them? Why is just being in that alleyway enough for him to black out?"

Alfred's back is impassive.

"It's nowhere near Park Row," she adds, softer.

"You're right," he replies, "It isn't."

"But it does---" Selina exhales, "Look like---Crime Alley. Only slightly, but it does. From the right angle."

"That, too, is correct."

"It also looks like every other back street in Gotham," she sighs, uselessly spinning back to the desk and removing the headset entirely. The dead end looks back at her. "I don't understand." She feels like her insides are trembling.

"It's not your fault," Alfred tells her, surprisingly fondly.

"I don't care," she snaps back, exasperated, her shoulders dropping. "I just want to help him."

Fifteen minutes later, the car comes speeding down to the platform, wet shield plating glimmering under the white lights. Bruce hops out and pulls back the cowl, his hair drenched underneath.

"Go get some sleep," he tells her in passing, and Selina closes her mouth.

*

Breakfast is served at ten. Selina eats a bite or two before leeching onto a coffee cup and gulping down half before acknowledging the taste at all. The morning floods her along with the warm yellow light coming in through the windows, the smell of cooking and old wood. It's a little cold in the kitchen, but she just bundles herself tighter in the robe she found prepared for her on the bed last night (it's fluffy and soft, and she doesn't know if Alfred bought it this week or if it belonged to Bruce's mother). She actually doesn't feel like she might cry any second.

Bruce skips the food entirely. He sips plain black coffee as he goes over something on a tablet, brow pinched in concentration. Alfred is nowhere to be seen.

"I have to go to work today," he says after briefing her on the (wanting) findings of the night before, "I'll be back around eight. Stay here. Don't leave the grounds."

"I was wondering when you'd implement the house arrest," she mutters.

Bruce looks up from the screen. Both his eyes look like he was in a bar fight. 

"I know you're going there tonight," she says quietly. "I'm coming with you. If he's---"

"Selina, we can't be seen working together," he objects.

A thunderclap goes through her chest. "I'm sorry?"

"If Sionis finds out I'm helping you, he'll adjust accordingly," he says, voice coming from low in his throat, "As long as he thinks you're alone, we have the upper hand."

Selina exhales her premature anger. Her eyes wander over her plate.

"You're right." What she doesn't say is that she's still working the other thing; that she's not alone. By definition, she isn't. It should not be this difficult to process. "We go separately. You scout out the most promising location, and I'll get in touch with a few friends. See if anyone's noticed Black Mask's return."

"What if someone rats you out?"

Selina shrugs. 

"I know how to exit stage pretty quickly."

Bruce thinks for a few seconds, then nods. They have always been good at compromising.

They sit in comfortable silence for a few more minutes, and then Bruce clears his throat.

"You called Dick."

Selina smacks her hand against the countertop. "Oh, great. You're monitoring my calls."

"He called Alfred," he puts the tablet down. 

Selina swallows. 

"Yes, I called Dick," she says.

"Because you thought I was lying."

"I," she suddenly has the inexplicable urge to laugh. Nerves. "No. I believed you." She blinks. "But I... I had a pretty fucked-up dream. And in the moment, I just had to be sure."

He doesn't move. "You don't trust me."

"I do trust you, Bruce," she presses, "It was just a dream."

She knows she should stop there. She exhales. "And, also, you haven't been---in the best state of mind."

Bruce's eyes sharpen in a split second.

"That's rich."

She scoffs. "I'm open with you! I told you Roman was after me!"

"When I threatened to risk my life."

"Which was a fucked-up thing to do, by the way," she snaps.

"You forced my hand."

"I didn't force you to do anything," she says, and for the first time, her voice falters. Her throat suddenly hurts so much she can barely speak. "I pry because I care about you, and about Dick. And I know I was gone a long time, but for me..." She shakes her head, turning away. "I saw the grave, Bruce. There was a new Robin. Wasn't there."

She doesn't expect an answer, not after she's failed time and time again to get a word out of him about the uniform. She's not even looking at him when he speaks.

"Yes."

Selina meets his eyes, frozen. She keeps still, like a single movement could scare him off. Bruce keeps his gaze trained on her.

"He was a street kid," he says, his voice level, "I took him in."

His pause drags on, and Selina musters her courage. "What happened to him?"

Bruce is just staring at her, and his eyes are full beyond feeling. "The Joker beat him to death with a crowbar."

This time, Selina doesn't say anything. He pulls in a breath and shoves the tablet away, then puts his elbows on the countertop and buries his face in his hands. He doesn't move. Before she even knows it, she's out of her seat.

"Bruce," she's saying, holding the sides of his head, stroking his hair, "Bruce." She pulls him in, and he relents eventually, leaning his temple against the side of her neck. She can feel tears seeping into her shirt, and she has to blink back her own; it's been years since she last saw him cry. 

She wraps both arms around him, kisses the top of his head. He doesn't make a sound. 

*

It's raining again.

"Sionis hasn't met with anyone," Selina almost has to shout over the noise; it hurts his ear. "That kind of thing resonates. Either he's not in the city yet, or he's got other things on his mind. How's your B&E coming along?"

Bruce looks down at the men guarding not only the metal door, but the balconies above it, as well as the roof.

"Waiting for an opening. They've tightened security."

"Uh-uh," Selina sounds like she's planning trouble. "I'll help you out."

"We talked about this."

"Relax. I'm just going to give them a taste of the old cat-and-mouse." 

Bruce growls under his exhale. "Be careful."

She laughs, but quickly bites down on whatever joke she was going to deliver; he hears her pull in a breath. "I will," she says, slightly off. 

This is going to be hell.

He stays quiet, waiting patiently until he sees the first hint of movement amongst the men. It's quickly followed by an indistinct couple of words, likely exchanged over radio, and then several of them leave their posts. A street away, he hears engines.

Using herself as bait; he wonders, as he has many times before, if she just loves the adrenaline that much or if she truly doesn't care whether she lives or dies.

But that is not a conundrum for now. Bruce grapples to the opposite rooftop and slowly lowers himself onto the highest balcony, feeling like the old concrete might give under his weight any moment. One lookout missing from his station by the door after the moment of chaos just now is not too much of a stretch; he falls on him like divine punishment, choking him out and slowly lowering him to the ground. He ties him up, zips him to the balcony now far overhead. 

"Is it working?" Selina, breathing heavier than usual.

"Yes."

The building is old; the strange layout suggests it's been repurposed many times, but truthfully right now it most resembles a criminal den. The ground floor is almost suspiciously empty. Bruce moves through the corridors like a shadow, grapple at the ready. 

Around the third turn, he finds an old, yellow staircase that looks like it was power-washed recently. He takes one glance at the vent and decides not to bother. Without the building plans, figuring out a route would be hell. Not impossible, but time-consuming, and his window is closing quickly. 

He goes down. To his right, he hears indistinct conversation---several people, four at the most, all men. There's a gambling room set up in what seems to be a kitchen, judging by the amount of metal around the walls. He passes them easily, soundless on his feet, and makes his way further down.

An office. Empty. He sneaks in through a door that is already ajar; wise to put an operation literally underground, with no windows and no quick escape route for possible intruders. Bruce doesn't like it, but the base is practically empty anyway.

His head hurts. Not the drilling sensation between his ears, just a slight ache in his forehead. Echoes again. He exhales and looks around, searching for anything that might hold data, but all he sees on the surface is a bare, dirty room with an out-of-place mahogany desk and leather chair. There's a halfway-closed laptop, the screen black. 

"Selina," he whispers as he opens it. "He's not here. It looks like he left in a hurry."

The screen lights up and requests a password. Bruce notices a drawer with a lock on it; book keeping. He moves the laptop aside and gets to work.

"That would explain the car that joined the chase a while ago. How about his stuff?" Selina is panting. "Computer, papers, safe---I don't know---"

"There's a laptop." He blinks. "I'm going to need some time."

"As long as it takes. Can't seem to lose them anyway," she says. "I think they stuck me with a tracker."

Bruce clenches his jaw.

"Can't you get it off?"

"Not at the moment," she laughs, breathy. He furrows his brow.

"Keep me updated."

The lock gives and he opens the drawer, picking out some loose sheets of paper and a small black calendar. People often fall into the most foolish of habits. 

The papers draw his attention; they look like scanned floor plans, just one apartment judging by the layout. The oddly familiar layout.

He tilts his head, picturing it in real life, the placing of the walls and doors---and quickly realises he's looking at Selina's flat. 

"B?" her voice pipes up in his ear, wheezing now, "I think I've got a problem."

He straightens up. "What's going on?"

"So, I got the tracker out, right? Thing is, it had a bullet on it."

The world swims. He closes his hand on the edge of the desk to keep steady.

"Take the Batwing, get out of there," he snaps. "Right now."

"Uh-uh." 

The howl of the wind has stopped. She doesn't sound like she's running anymore.

"God, I'm an idiot," she says, pained. "Oh. Cops are here, too. Great."

"Selina," he purses his lips.

If he takes the laptop, he reveals his interference, or at least some outside interference that Sionis will surely react to. This is not how he does things, not so early on.

And how odd that Sionis would go to such pains to remain under the radar, and then recklessly involve himself in the chase---jump at the first chance to get Selina, no matter the risk. Bruce has underestimated the gravity of the entire situation. 

*

She doesn't call Alfred.

She's tired and bleeding from the gunshot wound just above her hip. She ditched the tracker a few blocks away, but then the cops saw her---she can hear the sirens below, they're making their way up.

Fucking Sionis. Ever the hothead, even if it means driving straight into a police blockade; and maybe he does get killed tonight. Maybe she wins here, in a puddle of her own blood, with Sionis dead in the street. Maybe Bruce never would've gotten him, with his creeping and skulking and collecting information over months and months only to put the bad guy away for two seconds. 

She puts her hand over the wound and watches silver clouds spiral into view. What a day.

But maybe he lives. Maybe he gets away, and she's the only one dead by tomorrow. 

She pulls off her goggles and hood in one smooth motion, glad to feel the cold night wind in her hair; she breathes easier with the world as it is around her.

At the end of the day, it's all Bruce's fault.

She tells him that when he descends from the dark sky, his arms put forward. She tells him again, because she's not sure she did it right the first time, and then there's a jolt of pain in her thigh.

"Ow!" she yells and punches him in the shoulder, hard.

"Ow, yourself," he whispers, and then everything goes fuzzy around her.

"You," she says, floating. She's not moving, but she's moving, held up and very close to him for some reason. "It's your fault. It's because of you."

"What's my fault?" he asks. His voice is calm and understanding. He reminds Selina of a preschool teacher. Fucking ridiculous.

They're in a dark cabin of some sort, Bruce's face illuminated red. What is this, a safe house? Small. She looks at the screens and gathers that they must be flying.

"Holly," she rasps. 

Wait, she's holding something. Her hand is on her hip, gauze in between. Red. She presses down. Legs.

"Holly?" Bruce repeats. "Who's Holly?"

"You know, Holly," she pleads, tilting her head back against something hard and cold. "Holly."

And she sobs; she closes her eyes and covers her face with both hands, and she smells something metallic and salty.

"Keep pressure on it," Bruce says harshly.

She holds the gauze down. The smell is on her face now.

"Yeah," he adds, "I remember Holly. She was your roommate, right?"

"Yeah!" she nods, but clearly that was a mistake, because everything blurs around her again, "He killed her. Bruce, he killed her. Over nothing."

Quiet. Is she alone? That's scary. She pulls in a shuddering breath, looking for him, and then he's there---cut out in red.

"What happened then?" Bruce asks, and she finds it very cruel that he does, when it's his fault. He should know. 

"You," she says. "You, because you... I didn't... I wanted to, but I didn't do it... because of you." Her face twists in pain. "Because of you. It's your fault."

"Yeah," there's a hand on the side of her face, "It is. I messed up. Give me a chance to fix it." 

Her anger flares up, because he's just saying that to keep her talking, she knows he is. He doesn't care. He just pretends.

"No," she snaps. "You can't fix dead."

She pauses, already forgetting. She feels she said something wrong, so she reaches out, pulls his hand away from whatever he's holding.

"But I do love you, okay?" she nods. "It's just... Just so you know."

Bruce is staring at her.

"Yes. Okay."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :') juggling projects always leads to some of them being put aside, knowingly or not, so I am sorry.  
Thank you sm for reading.

**Author's Note:**

> be sure to tell me your thoughts! thanks for reading.


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